Grounded throttle body and MPG

Use a bigger wire... Seriously, why would you expect any difference at all?

 

Try a smaller gauge (thicker) wire, and put a relay on it. You can then wire a switch in your dash to control the relay to engage/disengage the grounding of the throttle body.

How about, use the Power Mode button?

 

I sure am glad that you didn't see a post suggesting that you ground the positive battery post.

Seriously, that probably is making the engine run a bit richer, as evidenced by the better "response" and reduced mileage.

Richer is not always better.

It can cause carbon accumulation in the combustion chambers and have a bad affect on the cat. converter. It might take a LONG time for any serious negatives to show up.

 

My first impulse was to look at the calendar but April 1 is still three weeks away, so I searched our beloved PriusChat to see just what kind of thread and advice that could be, and sure enough I'd missed a couple old threads talking about "grounding kits" apparently sold as a performance mod.

• One from 2005 with a lot of posts by a member obviously acting as sales rep
• One from 2012

I'm fighting the temptation to write much more about it as I need the time for other things, but thought at least it could be helpful to connect back to the older threads.

-Chap

 

Thanks for the links, Chap. The benefits promised after installing the wires from this site are quite amazing - even your sunroof will work better!

http://www.sigmaauto.com/EGS/egs.php

 

it is interesting. i thought you were kidding at first.

 

Ah, this one.

AFAIK, the two electrical things on the TB are the throttle position sensor and the ETCS motor, and wrxsubiemod must be of the opinion that neither one has an adequate ground wire brought to it in the harness connector. I'm kind of curious whether either item even has any continuity to speak of between its ground wiring terminal and its mounting to the TB. That ought to be a couple easy multimeter checks, but I haven't made them so I don't know.

-Chap

Once that switch is installed, I wonder if we could find any other PriusChatters in the Vegas area who'd volunteer for test drives to evaluate throttle response, while blinded as to the setting of the switch.

-Chap

 

Waitaminute......

HUH??

I haven't pulled the TB on my 2010 yet, but I was thinking that it was made from.....
Metal maybe?

And it's bolted to an....Aluminum head and motor?

My basic electronics training was quite a while ago, but wouldn't this mean that the TB is already GROUNDED?

If I didn't think this was an elaborate early 01APR joke....I'd grab my Fluke and yank open the hood....

 

Which is exactly why you should not be screwing with things you don't understand.

 

I know that's the case in my Gen 1, but somewhere I picked up the idea that Gen 3 had moved to a plastic intake manifold on the 1.8 engine. So that part of the post maybe does make sense.

AFAICT it may be the only part that makes sense; the electronic items on the TB have both power and ground in their wiring harness connections, and the one check that would shed a lot of light on this grounding idea would be whether either of those items even has continuity between its grounding terminal, and its mounting to the TB. That shouldn't be hard to check but I don't have a Gen 3.

On the other hand, we do have the OP's self-report that the throttle response is changed, and that it's not his imagination. That's interesting as far as it goes, but of course there's a reason journals don't publish findings from self-reported perceptions. I'd still like to hear when that switch is in place and some other Vegas-area PriusChatters feel like doing some documented blind trials.

-Chap

 

A manifold may be plastic, but the bolts are not.

 

I suppose we need is a picture or a description of exactly where the ground wire is placed.
If the TB were to be made of plastic then I'm a bit of a skeptic on grounding it actually accomplishing anything.
All of this is ridiculously easy to prove and it will cost anybody who is interested very littlle to investigate:

I'd do it myself and document the results, but I'm convinced that this is all an early April fool's joke.
Somebody read an article somewhere about K$N filters "improving throttle responses" and said to themselves: "Hey!...Let me start a rumor and see if I can get people to........."



That's funny!

Danny's "SPAM generator" came up with this after my last post.

Don't try this at home......

 

+1
Those are handy little meters, given the price but it should be noted that they will NOT indicate polarity.
That is, there is no minus sign on the display and it will show just 12.6 no matter which way the leads are applied.

 

Can't you get the same (or better) self-observed performance increase out of a couple of strategically applied decals?

 

Lets not forget the immense performance boost obtained from a set of chrome wheels.

 

Are these also called "go-faster stripes" in the USA?

 

Hey, I've got one of those. Went out and checked:

There's no continuity between throttle body and rest of car body. It's isolated.