Greetings:

I read an interesting item in the February 2011 edition of Popular Mechanics about a very odd, but evidently not unusual, problem that ended up being a battery grounding problem.

A person wrote into the Car Clinic columnist asking what might be the cause of his CV joints and wheel bearings wearing out very frequently - in just a few months. Mike Allen, the host, replied that the problem was being caused by a bad or missing ground between the engine block and the battery's negative terminal, while the ground connection from the chassis to ground was good.

What was happening was the high engine starter current, 100 A or more, was routing through the path of least resistance - in this case through the metal wheel bearings and CV joints. Who wouldda thunk???

Mike says he's seen the same thing before, and even in an older car that had a metal pushrod cable from the gas pedal to the carburetor, where it was glowing red-hot during the engine cranking. It is not just an annoyance, but a real fire hazard!

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- Kirt Blattenberger
RF Cafe Progenitor & Webmaster