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Electrical grounding wire?

1994 Camry 4 cylinder - right (US passenger side) front fender, about six inches behind the headlight is a wire poking up in the air with a flat metal termination with a hole (as if for a bolt) through it. Wire is white with a black stripe. On the fender nearby is a threaded hole with original body color factory paint. Near as I can determine from the wiring diagram, all white wires with black stripe are for ground - but none are shown on the diagram apart from left side. Anyone else have this unconnected wire? For some accessory I don't have, or bolted to the fender for a ground? The wiring is so thoroughly designed, even including reinforcement where the cabling runs through the body, seems odd that this single wire is poking out. I realize this probably won't happen, but was hoping if this wire should be grounded, might help reduce static on AM radio band (noise suppression capacitor near the coil checks fine.) Don't want to bolt this wire to the fender if it carries current for some other purpose.
Reply to
Daniel M. Dreifus
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Cars have many earth-points to guard against poor regulation of the earthing system ie if all the current which flows in the cars +12v went to earth thru one point (especially where there's a lot of plastic), there would be an opportunity for alternative 'soft earths' to also carry some of the combined current which causes wierd effects such as dimly glowing alarm lights,..so the more eaths the better.

You could use a digital ohm or continuity meter to check that this wire IS an earth wire. It should show essentially less than 0.05 ohms when one lead is connected to the wire in question and the other the body of the car. Good connections are essential when doing this test.

Jason

Reply to
Jason James

Looks like the reading is 130 ohms, so I'll just leave that wire alone, rather than attempting to ground it. Used a digital multimeter, which I purchased for accurate readings vs. my old analog VOM. The readings jumped around a bit, staying at zero for a while, but when I put the wire terminal on the plastic case and pressed with the meter lead to create good contact, the reading was 130.

Reply to
Daniel M. Dreifus

Daniel,

I have the same year car with the same engine. I just ran down and checked mine. You described it very well. It is a part of the wire harness and on my car the white/black wire does screw into the frame/gnd. Contact me offline if need be and I'll send you a digital pic....

BLimey

Reply to
BLimey

Sounds a bit like its not part of the multiple earth system. It maybe the earth for a relay or some feature the car has which would now not be working??

May have volts on it as well,...did you check for volts?

Jason

Reply to
Jason James

BLimey wrote: I have the same year car with the same engine. I just ran down and checked mine. You described it very well. It is a part of the wire harness and on my car the white/black wire does screw into the frame/gnd. Contact me offline if need be and I'll send you a digital pic....

Got the photo, double checked the wiring diagram - seems like white with black stripe is a convention for ground in most all of the wiring diagrams. Went ahead and bolted the wire to ground and a license plate light went out - but turned out to be coincidence only. Today I purchased aligator clips for the digital multimeter leads - without them could never be sure I was getting accurate readings by pressing the sharp point of the leads to a contact. Anyway, no blown fuses, wire didn't heat up and fry to a crisp, all is well. Still a mystery why that wire was left dangling, but seeing the photo confirmed my guess that it did in fact go to ground. Thanks for your suggestions. Looks like I'm all set.

Reply to
Daniel M. Dreifus

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