At 08:46 PM 6/6/2002, brian Honan wrote: >Hi Volks, > > Is it ok to replace the braded ground straps with a batery like cable ? >In perticular the one to the left of the engine. There are two reasons for the braid -- one is flexibility/fatigue resistance and the other is surface area. That strap is intended among other things to act as a radio-frequency ground to assist in reducing both incoming and outgoing radio interference; and it's a characteristic of RF that it travels only along the surface of a conductor. A regular stranded wire would have to be much larger to present the same surface area, which would greatly aggravate the fatigue problem (I think, haven't really thought that through). In any case, to get the equivalent grounding effect you need equivalent surface area. Side note -- there is a type of wire known as "Litz wire" in which each of the many fine strands is individually insulated, and then the wire is braided together, not just twisted. This forces RF to travel along the surface of each of the individual strands, greatly increasing the effective surface. Stuff's a bugger to solder, though, since you have to clean each strand individually. Second side note -- a lot of very high-frequency RF wiring is done with silver-plated tubing instead of wires -- the higher the frequency the greater the "skin effect." david ps -- short answer -- not a good idea. You can certainly get away with it in emergency. -- David Beierl - Providence, RI http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/ '84 Westy "Dutiful Passage" '85 GL "Poor Relation" |
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