hey all, to start out, i should note i only sort of understand and can manage to wrap my head around the concept of a ground.

my rx8s has had tons of issues due to the prev. owner with the battery terminals, for a while it was the positive, for the past couple of years now its been the negative. i currently run an autozone spliced terminal(strip the ground wires, insert them into them into the holes, tighten them, and you are good to go).

im going to try to keep things brief for the sake of readability. about a month or two ago i was having white battery residue prevent me from starting, cleaned it, kept happening. decided to try to replace the terminal since that might be it, tried that, at first didnt have power steering, re-oriented it and got power steering back, but the car would idle hunt and sometimes stall at idle, other times not, but it never did when there was no power steering, idle problems or power steering from the lack of a solid ground connection.

changed my belts a couple weeks ago, made sure my torque setting were right, but i kept having problems with my negative terminal, kept unscrewing the wires and temporarily getting better results, then something would happen and sometimes id loose power steering, like the electrical tape breaking off or the spliced wires slipping out a good amount while driving.

said **** it, bought a new battery, same problem. not the alternator, pretty sure its not the belts as if anything i might have over tightened them but i did use a torque wrench at first. bought a new terminal today with the battery, idle hunting problems... recently i thought the powersteering loss was due to the connectors under the airbox going bad, which led me to see the ground wire. on a visual inspection (i can still kind of see it with the airbox back in) it looks completely fine.

i dont know why this keeps happening. car usually cranks slow regardless of if its cold or hot. I AM ALMOST CERTAIN THIS IS A GROUND PROBLEM, but I cannot understand how to go about fixing it. to me it seems like there isnt enough ground but there still is enough to where its never anything but an annoyance? what can i do to solve this once and for all.

 

Have you cleaned the other ground wires at the contact points?

 

im not sure where those would be, I have tried looking at where those would be, maybe I dont know the search terms to use but no.

 

https://www.flex-innovations.com/rx8...ry%20terminal.

 

Just fixed a similar problem, intermittent steering failures.

I had this problem the first year I owned it, and found (thru this site) that mazda had re-engineered the steering wire harness.
I told the dealer and they got it fixed, not a problem in the last twenty years....

Turns out the dealer/mechanic had not replaced the harness, he had chopped some wires at the steering sensor and spliced in some thicker wires.
These connectors had all corroded and were now rusty and broken.

Had to re-pin the sensor plug and clean up all the ground points.
The main ground for the steering is under the airbox on the support beam and attaches to the rack directly below.

Seems to have worked, maybe good for another twenty?