Wiring loom - odd addition

Post Sat Jun 23, 2012 10:04 pm

The old wiring loom from my M20B20 is going to be fitted to my M20B25 from an E34, so I've laid them out for a side-by-side comparison.

My loom has had a bodge - someone ran a length of building earth wire (solid core, green/yellow shield) from the battery + terminal, and it must have run to either the starter or the alternator, based on the ring terminals. BUT, all of the existing wiring to those is still in place.

So what would be the purpose in doing that? The car had LPG years ago, could that be something left over, or is it just utterly redundant? I just can't work out what that wire was added for.

Post Sat Jun 23, 2012 11:57 pm

Someone replaced the starter motor, forgot how the wires went, connected one large wire to each of the 8mm posts, instead both to the outer post (it's happened several times on here), found that the battery wouldn't charge, so ran a wire directly from the alternator to the battery.
Feasible?

Post Tue Jul 24, 2012 5:36 pm

Sorry for bringing this up again. Just refitting the loom to the new engine and came across this odd extra again. Not only is there the extra positive wire, but there's also two small wires with ring terminals that seem to run to the EARTH terminal on the shock tower!

God knows what sort of bodge the previous owner had in mind; I just cut the whole ting away and binned it.