Exhaust Grounding?

[ifinditundrgrnd]

I had an exhaust pipe separate from the flange under my 07 Nissan DD. While poking around under the car I noticed there was a braided ground strap between the muffler and the frame -broken of course. I've done a couple of google searches about it and the answers are all over the place (Duh...it's the internet). Anybody have any real info on why my exhaust would be grounded, and how important is it to get a ground reestablished? Thanks!

 

[oldmodman]

Any ungrounded metal to metal contact can induce a electrical spike that "May" affect any of the computerized systems on a car.

It's cheap insurance on the part of the manufacturer. They may have encountered electrical "noise" caused by metal to metal contact that made, as an example, hickup in the fuel injection at a certain engine rpm. And the engineers decided to ground strap everything as the cheapest way to eliminate the gremlins. Also, a long metal object that is only grounded at one end (like the exhaust being attached at the block and then the rest of the length hanging from non conductive straps) can act as an antenna, or worse, as an inductor and pick up all kinds of electrical noise from ignitions, motors and so on. And feed that noise back into the electrical system.

 

[ford_racer]

Any ungrounded metal to metal contact can induce a electrical spike that "May" affect any of the computerized systems on a car.

It's cheap insurance on the part of the manufacturer. They may have encountered electrical "noise" caused by metal to metal contact that made, as an example, hickup in the fuel injection at a certain engine rpm. And the engineers decided to ground strap everything as the cheapest way to eliminate the gremlins. Also, a long metal object that is only grounded at one end (like the exhaust being attached at the block and then the rest of the length hanging from non conductive straps) can act as an antenna, or worse, as an inductor and pick up all kinds of electrical noise from ignitions, motors and so on. And feed that noise back into the electrical system.

/thread

 

[TqMnster]

The above post is good info. Also I know in the f body world the o2 sensors ground to the exhaust pipe and people add grounding straps to help the sensors when long tubes are added cause they are notorious for not getting warm enough

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

[ifinditundrgrnd]

Any ungrounded metal to metal contact can induce a electrical spike that "May" affect any of the computerized systems on a car.

It's cheap insurance on the part of the manufacturer. They may have encountered electrical "noise" caused by metal to metal contact that made, as an example, hickup in the fuel injection at a certain engine rpm. And the engineers decided to ground strap everything as the cheapest way to eliminate the gremlins. Also, a long metal object that is only grounded at one end (like the exhaust being attached at the block and then the rest of the length hanging from non conductive straps) can act as an antenna, or worse, as an inductor and pick up all kinds of electrical noise from ignitions, motors and so on. And feed that noise back into the electrical system.

Finally, a good answer. Thank you all.
:thumbsup: