Project Snicket, Grounding Games

This darn car. There is always something that makes me shake my fist in frustration.

I’ll cut to the chase. I ruined the throttle cable. It sucks, another new one is on the way. I confirmed it by unbolting the bottom of the accelerator pedal and pulling the cable by hand (still attached to the top of the accelerator pedal), sure enough, the binding was there.

How did I ruin it? Grounds. The car had chosen to use the throttle cable as a ground for the engine electrical system. Obviously with such a small metal inner cable, this didn’t go well and it has damaged the outer lining.

But I had a ground from the engine to subframe, what happened?

At a quick glance, yes, I had a ground. But wait, what?!

That’s not good

The ground IS attached to the bolt, but the bolt is no longer attached to the engine. Looking back through the photos of when I drilled the sump plug, you can see the crack in the plate.

You can also see its broken before

Could this be due to the very tired old stabiliser mounts I recently replaced? It’s a solid piece of steel, it must take a lot of force to break it. If the engine was rocking back and forth from having bad mounts this could have finished it off.

I unbolted the ground strap and stuck it straight onto the mounting stud for the plate, on the gearbox.

I don’t know if this broke before or after I fitted the extra ground cable, but I suspect before due to the throttle cable damage.

Since hooking the ground back up, there has been a noticeable difference in the amount of flickering the headlights do when idling.

I have a replacement plate now, so I’ll need to get around to fitting that. It’s not a hard or big job, just need the time and motivation to do it. I’ll be taking some time off working on the Mini to focus on fixing Tess and getting her ready for her WOF inspection which is due.