mystery steel braided thingy...
 

just for the heck of it, i got under my rear bumper to see how my exhaust was doin... i noticed a completely cut and frayed steel braided thing somewhere in between the pass. side exhaust and the rear quarter panel underneath the car... in the morning when i have my car up on jackstands (for my radiator replacement) i'll take a better look at whats goin on back there and maybe get some pics, but off-hand can anybody think of what it is?

thanks,
-drew

Sounds like something that is commonly used to attach the exhaust to the body of the car. I think it's purpose is that if one of the exhaust hangers fails, braided steel cord will hold it up off the ground until it can be fixed. I'm not entirely sure and pictures would be your best bet.

Isn't that an electrical ground cord?

Yes, it's a grounding strap. It's called a "radio earth connector" (or some such) on a parts diagram.

dcb

Mine was like that before I got rid of the car... Would this explain why I couldn't get like...ANY radio stations?

J

nice guess, eh!

I doubt it would affect reception. If anything, not having proper chassis grounds might result in some static.

dcb

On the racer we figured out how important proper grounding is.

During a race, our modified exhaust (thanks Tom) came apart in the middle and a few seconds later the car stalled. We weren't real concerned about re-attaching the exhaust so when we couldn't get her to start up again, we loaded her on the trailer and went home.

When we got to looking at her, we realized that the fuel pump wasn't running but couldn't we couldn't figure out why...

One day Ben decided to re-attach the exhaust and then she started right up.

At that point we decided to run a ground from the engine, to various chassis points back to the battery in the trunk.

little confused
 

how come i dont SEEM to be experiencing any ill effects without this guy attatched? its just hangin there in two places...

-drew

Can't say, but you gotta figure they put it there for a reason. Maybe you could just replace it with a length of beefy copper wire.

dcb

because the race car is stripped. They lost many grounds in the car while stripping it. Losing the exhaust ground for them was the straw that broke the camel's back persay

Tom

okay! makes sense... thanks alot everybody! it seems easy enough to replace so i'll go ahead and do that...

Yeah, we had that thought...