G50 MAF Ground Upgrade

[lino]

An Infiniti dealer that I know sells a MAF ground upgrade kit. Has anyone here ever bought one or made one?

Here is a picture of what he offers in his kit:

[Q45tech]

The need for extra grounds dependson the condition of oem ground.Most as built grounds are more than sufficient but a few were found to have higher than designed resistance which caused the MAF to deviate from EXPECTED votage at idle and low flows [cruise].The difference is around 0.01 to 0.1 volt against a nominal 1.1 volts at hot idle.

Easy to test by monitoring MAF output at idle and temporarily adding another ground and looking for any deviation in MAF output voltage.

Careful grounding the MAF output or the +12 volt input can burn things up

[bullittandy]

I've read a couple of stories about upgraded ground kits added to engines and was interested to know if these kits simply solve a problem from old age or are there any modern cars that may benefit from them?

One story I remember was a Volvo turbo that gained about 10 HP from adding a grounding kit. who knows if they were controlled circumstances though.

any ideas?

[Q45tech]

All sensors are grounded or referenced to chassis ground to generate A VOLTAGE to ECU reflecting their status.

Old age, corrosion, oxidized solder and copper can all change the reference.

The point is measure the grounds and evaluate their condition BEFORE wasting any money on things that may not help.

Important to understand what oem voltages should be and how much any deviation will change ecu.

The most critical voltage is the MAF, followed by TPS, then the coolant temp sensor. Most sensors have a span of 0.4 .> 4.4 volts and ecu divides these voltages into 10 steps except MAF which has 50 steps reflecting 5> 250 grams per second.

[goody90q45]

I'm electronically challenged but doesn't the black wire included in Lino's kit splice into the (black) ground wire at the MAF connector pin with the other end of the wire running to a strong ground on the engine block?

[Q45tech]

The question is where do you want the reference ground to be, normally the battery negative terminal is the GROUND. So you measure the resistance of any so called auxillary grounds to the battery terminal.

The MAF gets its ground from the Master ground in ECU which is connected to battery via wires and being bolted to chassis. Since ECU is where all measurements occur and get translated to something useful.

The question is what is the resistance from ecu chassis out to MAF ground connection.

NOT creating weird supplemental grounds which might pick up stray signals during cranking or coupling spark coil signals into MAF which might cause other problems.

For those interested use an oscilloscope to VIEW the MAF output voltage you can see the gulps of air as each cylinder fills vs the AVERAGE SMOOTHED voltage a VOM reads. There is additional trash on the waveform already from pickups from coils and other electrical items [fan motors, solenoids and relays opening and closing. If you connect an audio amplifier and speaker you will hear an audio tone representing the rpm X4 /60....................44 Hz at idle and 440 Hz at 6500 rpm

The ECU filters all this junk out and averages the signal

[Kiven422]

amazing!.... I just did this 3 weeks ago!

The MAF wiring went bad on my car... now its rock solid good!

[jimbyjimb]

I had to buy a connector that came with the ground also, I didn't hook it up since my Q seems to operate just fine. I figured if I had to it's a simple and fast fix.

[qsiguy]

I've owned 2 '94 Q45's and they both had this mod done when I got them...FYI.

[lino]

amazing!.... I just did this 3 weeks ago!

The MAF wiring went bad on my car... now its rock solid good!

Can you elaborate on what you did please?

[lino]

I've owned 2 '94 Q45's and they both had this mod done when I got them...FYI.

Did you mean that you did them when you first got the cars or do you mean they were done by the previous owner?

[duckman240sx]

Ooo.... Thats what that is. I just pick up my Q45 and it had this one there. I removed it, since it look like a hack job to me. Guess i will be reinstalling lol.