Re: Grounding Gas Deck Fill
Originally posted by PaulKim:<br /> Thanks everyone. I'm almost there.<br /><br />In looking at the back of my Guel gauge it appears that there is a ground. <br /><br />My approach is as follows<br /><br />Bond Deck Fill to Gas Tank, Gas Tank to Fuel Gauge (Black Ground), Fuel Gauge to Tach, Tach to Control, where the control is bonded to the Outboard, and control is grounded to negative battery terminal.<br /><br />Will this work, or should I increase my life insurance
I don't understand electricity as well as I would like, but to be on the safe side, let me add some negative (pun intended) thoughts. In the above scheme it would seem that disconnecting any of the above links would leave the fuels system ungrounded, ripe for a static explosion. In most of the other systems proposed, if the battery is disconnected the same situation would be created. I believe I have noticed, especially on the bigger boats, a copper grounding strap running the length of the boat that EVERYTHING is grounded to, which strap in turn is permanantly grounded to an unmoving (not the propellor shaft, etc) underwater part, such as a bolt that directly connects to the propellor shaft strut or a sintered copper plate. This is in addition to all the negative electrical wiring that runs back to the battery. This is to insure the discharge of static electricity at all times, even when the battery is disconnected or the motor is taken out. I believe that the negative side of wiring and the grounding of electricity are not the same thing, if that makes any sense.<br /> Sort of off topic but relating to sintered copper plates (which are plates attached to the bottom of the hull made from thousands of tiny copper balls fused together that offer a huge amount of surface area, compared to a solid plate, for grounding purposes), if you have lightening protection on your boat and it is grounded to one of these plates, if lightening hits, it immediately turns all the water in the spaces between the copper balls into steam which cannot readily escape so the plate explodes, sometimes putting a huge hole in the bottom of your boat. <br />Yes, increase your life insurance. Sam