Ground Strap Question

[Funmart6]

There is a small mesh cable at the driver's side corner on the inside of the hood near the windshield, looks to be a ground strap. If this were broken (for any reason) what would it affect. I just found mine to be broken and don't have a clue how it happened. How do you replace this thing, looks like it is riveted to the underside of the hinge.

 

[ruWelded]

Hood Ground

That is just to ground the hood. The only thing you might notice is some popping or ticking engine noise on your AM radio. I don't think it is for any other purpose.

 

[hawkeye18]

Isn't that strap on the passenger's side? Mine is... and yes, it's just to ground the hood to the block, even though the hinges ground it to the body.

 

[Funmart6]

Thanks, so it is nothing to be too concerned with then, I wonder how the thing broke. Anyone ever have one break before. ****, I guess I could have hit it when hooking or unhooking the car bra, or when I removed the plastic cowling when I changed my rear plugs, who knows.
So without it, my hood is not going to start corroding and doing some weird metal chemical reaction thing is it?

 

[ShadetreeSHOguy]

Id find some way to reground that strap. that happened on my 89 and my temp gauge and check engine light went nuts for a week

 

[Funmart6]

Id find some way to reground that strap. that happened on my 89 and my temp gauge and check engine light went nuts for a week

That may explain why my tachometer was only half lit up the other night. A few miles down the road and it was fully lit. I will fix it soon, right now I kinda forced the ends back together and used some industrial adhesive to seal it back together.

 

[Mr Anonymous]

The hood ground strap is there to help dissipate static electricity which accumulates while you drive in certain atmospheric conditions. It's helps reduce RFI. The components of a modern car are reasonably well shielded against RFI, so things like gauges not working, etc. aren't going to be related. The biggest problem is radio interference. Since the hoods are metal they really shouldn't make much of a difference, the only reason I can think they added them was due to the then-new COP system.

Plastic hoods can accumulate more static electricity and obviously can't be grounded by simple contact via the hinges to the chassis, so the strap is much more important.

I'd say those straps are probably broken on about 80% of the V8 SHO's out there with no problems whatsoever.

 

[SHOZ123]

...... the only reason I can think they added them was due to the then-new COP system.

That is the reason the radio is in the rear of the car I recently read.

Mine was broke and with the CF hood there is no noticable increase in static or other malfunctions.

 

[Funmart6]

Okay, the tach light malfunction was probably due to it being very cold that night, I have noticed that when it is near or below freezing here, my radar detector will not come on when I crank up the car, (hard wired), once the interior warms up, it springs to life. I am going to assume that this was the same problem with the tach light also, maybe had a little condensation in the instrument panel or something, never happened before and hasn't happened since. Now that - that has been explained......on to the rest of the story...

I posted way back when about a wierd problem I had when I moved a coil around, it was determined to be RF interference. The problem was that upon accelleration, the car would act as if it was on the rev limiter, wouldn't shift, and a loss of power. Well, the other day, before I noticed the broken strap, it did it again, twice, when the car was cold. It hasn't occured since but I wonder if this had to do with the broken strap?