Grounding the bike frame?

[Lowell]

I can't think of any reason this would be a bad idea, after all every car on the road except for composite exotics have grounded chassies... anyone?

 

[NickF23]

bad idea

you increase the chance of a shortcircuit and you increase the chance of shocking yourself. very easy to be touching one wire and also the frame.

cars are only 12 volts so much less of a safety risk

 

[Lowell]

Well besides the risk of shocking yourself if you don't disconnect the battery terminals before working on the bike... as for only 12v it's amazing how quickly a car battery can heat up a wrench.

It's good practice to treat any electrical system with respect, be it 12, 100 or 240+V. Gloves, insulated grip tools etc.

 

[fechter]

It's generally considered bad practice to have the frame connected electrically.

The Voloci had the battery connected to the frame. One slip with a wrench while tightening the battery terminals results in an "unpleasant thermal event".

Having the frame isolated reduces the chances of a short circuit from any single failure.

Other than the shorting / safety issue, there's no other reason I can think of.

 

[Malcolm]

I believe there's also a risk of accelerated corrosion to the frame, even with a very small leakage current. This can also happen if the battery is not grounded, but it's a lot more likely if it is.

 

[Lowell]

Guess I'll be adding more wires. The thought was to reduce voltage drop as much as possible, so instead I'm going to use pairs of 10ga wires in parallel with a 45 amp Powerpole on each conductor. The 75A Powerpole housings are a bit on the bulky side...