Finding good ground

I have read form previous posts that the ST ground is located behind engine under the gas tank.

Are there any other locations easily accessible for an additional ground wire?

Under the seat, 10 mm bolt that holds seat mounting hardware to the frame. I have a multi lead ground lug there, has worked great for many years.

At the front there are a couple of threaded 10mm bolt holes for fairing supports and you can also use the bolts that secure the coils to the frame.

many thanks to you both

So what grounds ('earths' for those across the pond) are you guys running to these solid ground points?

LH headlight connector, cooling fans, and the single ground wire into the 24 pin harness connector. The 1 wire into the 24 pin ties all the devices in the front half of the bike to the original ground and is subject to overheating and melting in the connector. Spreading the load across several good ground points was my repair from the original issue.

dduelin said:

The 1 wire into the 24 pin ties all the devices in the front half of the bike to the original ground and is subject to overheating and melting in the connector. Spreading the load across several good ground points was my repair from the original issue.

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I did see an earlier post where someone added a heavier parallel jumper for both sides of that connector. Did you run a wire from the ground side of that connector to ground or from your aforementioned devices to a separate ground?

Good information about the grounding points. Thank you.

I've never been happy using chassis grounds for my own accessories. I'm not entirely sure why that would be - It must have been something that caused me problems at some point. Whatever it was - I have a single additional 30A black lead for connection to the negative post of the battery, and everything that I install has its own earth lead spliced into that.

Personal hang-up maybe, but don't forget that all connections to the chassis do not terminate at the chassis. They terminate at the battery negative terminal - so if either the battery's ground point to the chassis or the battery cable / ring terminal are not up to the job of returning the combined current of the normal bike, plus the accessories, then there may be problems ahead.

There is no issue for adding a few small extra devices (3 of the fused circuits used by the quartet harness have some spare capacity, for example), but start adding heavy current extras (eg heated gear 5A each; a loud horn - 18A; extra driving lights 3-5A each; etc etc) it all mounts up. Earthed to the chassis or not - it all has to get back to the battery.

The first repair was to fashion a new ground from the ground side of the 24 pin and ground it under one of the bolts holding on the left side coil. Later I had an issue where the LH headlight worked intermittently so it got a new ground. Then I had an issue where when the cooling fans cycled on the headlight high beam indicator illuminated. That was a head scratcher but creating a separate ground for the fans cured it.

jfheath said:

Good information about the grounding points. Thank you.

I've never been happy using chassis grounds for my own accessories.

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This is actually good practice. Residential grounding systems (AC, not DC, and 120/240 volts, not 12 like a bike or car) are all run back to the panel (cold water pipes are no longer permitted) and a dedicated ground bar. When you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Go to limited locations (Panels) for all of the ground terminations - you don't have to hunt all over the place for factory ground points. (Yes, conduit is a permitted ground path).

Whenever I added something to my bike's electrical system, I ran a black (ground) wire back to the aux. fusebox ground bar. This is connected directly to the neg battery post.