interior (cabin side of the firewall) grounding point

[mrxbobert]

Hey everyone,


I finally have time to install my foglights for my gen 5.5 camry (it's been 9+ months since i've bought them). I was able to run the harness through the grommet in the firewall, but now I'm stuck as to where I can ground the circuit.

I was hoping someone could shed some light on this for me. I believe that the chassis of the car acts as a grounding point, but I am not sure if I have to do any additional work (I read something about soldering a wire from the negative terminal of the battery to the body of the car).


Can someone tell me of a grounding point inside the cabin? or if I do need to do some additional work to make the chassis a grounding point.

Thanks ahead of time!

[MrSo0h0o]

maybe use the stock grounding point from your radio.. its not that hard at all to route a wire up there..

[TRD VVTi]

You can ground it anywhere on the main body/chassis. I grounded mine on the driver side. There are plenty of bolts to use as a ground. It's also very easy to run the wires from the passenger side to the driver side. I also mounted my relay over there. It's nice to have everything close to the factory fuses.

[mrxbobert]

Originally Posted by TRD VVTi

You can ground it anywhere on the main body/chassis. I grounded mine on the driver side. There are plenty of bolts to use as a ground. It's also very easy to run the wires from the passenger side to the driver side. I also mounted my relay over there. It's nice to have everything close to the factory fuses.

Do you mean the bolts underneath the steering column? I hope you do...as it would be easiest.

[touringcamry]

Anywhere on the chassis is fine. If you see white wires with black hash marks or stripes, those are ground wires and you can follow those to wherever they ground.

[TRD VVTi]

Originally Posted by mrxbobert

Do you mean the bolts underneath the steering column? I hope you do...as it would be easiest.

If I remember right I used a stud on the floor near where it gets vertical above the dead pedal. It was so easy that I can barely remember it.

[johnnyzee]

any bolt that goes through metal attached to the chassis.

[LE05]

there is a factory ground right underneath the drivers side kick panel, 10 mm bolt. like touringcamry said, it'll have white wires with black stripes.

[gdanaher]

Exercise some caution here and seek assistance. The original question suggests that they have no clue how an automotive DC electrical system works, and if they manage to attach a nonfused positive wire to ground they will be making a call to their insurance agent, wondering why the car burned up. It's no crime to be naive about systems, but find someone who >does< know something and let them teach you.

[LE05]

^they're foglights... simplest circuit you could possibly deal with. i don't think he has to worry about setting his car on fire...

[mrxbobert]

good deal..thanks for the help everyone! i'll check it out my options for the best set up.


gdanaher...thanks for the concern. I figure the worst I can do is blow the fuse thats in the harness...so i think this experiment is ok for a live and learn type of thing if anything does go wrong.

[mrxbobert]

Hopefully this follow up post will help some people in the future. i'm a complete newbie to anything electical outside of a basic physics course, so my quest in installing foglights has been a pain. however...with the help of a lot of friendly people, i managed to figure out how to wire everything.

my kit is an aftermarket oem style gen 5.5 foglight set.

It comes with the foglights itself, a wiring harness and a small set of nuts and bolts.

I found the wiring harness to be the most confusing thing as you can see in my original post here:

http://toyotanation.com/forum/t177345.html

Take a look at this picture here:

https://webfiles.uci.edu/rchirk/DSC00753.JPG


The item circled item on the right is a "relay" that plugs into the place where the OEM relay would go. That spot would be under the steering wheel as shown right here:

https://webfiles.uci.edu/rchirk/relay%20plug%20in.JPG

Another question I had was regarding grounding...

The harness needs to be grounded in 2 places. One inside the cabin, and one inside the engine bay.

Here is the first picture again:

https://webfiles.uci.edu/rchirk/DSC00753.JPG?uniq=z7ors

The black wire with the....copper circle... at the end gets grounded inside the cabin.

I found this to be the best spot :

https://webfiles.uci.edu/rchirk/inte...0grounding.JPG

It's right above the foot rest.

The harness goes through the firewall into the engine bay. there you connect the pigtails to the foglights and make 1 final grounding point.

again...it's another black wire with a copper circle as shown here:

https://webfiles.uci.edu/rchirk/DSC00752.JPG?uniq=z7orn

This gets connected to a bolt in the engine bay and you're good to go.

I think most of the ebay kits are either very similar or exactly the same...so hopefully this helps someone.


Thanks to snicko, le05, whitechocolate, trd vvti, goomph, johnyeez, touringcamry and everyone else who contributed to my learning experience!

[Goomph]

Soo, is it working now ? All done ? Pictures ?