Nissan Repair: broken wire and big 3 upgrade, oil dipstick, gas milage

Question
Hi Von,

I've been considering doing an up-grade of the big 3 wires (engine to chassie, bat to ground, bat to altinator) in my 95 XE V6 pick-up and i was wondering if this upgrade would make much of a difference.  I don't have a big stereo or dimming problems, but i do a lot of long trips and i've heard it can improve gas milage.  Is this a worthwhile upgrade?  Also, while i was poking around looking for those wires, i found a broken one.  It's a flat greenish wire that connects just in front of the oil dipstick, goes about a foot and bolts onto the side of the engine compartement beneath the charcoal canister.  Is this the engine to chassie ground? If not, what is it and should it be fixed asap?

Thanks for your help


Answer
Steve,

Having good grounding and good cables is important.  If you can get the factory cables and replace those that would be a great thing.  Now if you want redundant grounding from the engine to the chassis that would not be bad.  You can buy a couple of cables with pre-made terminals and mount them to the engine to the chassis to eliminate ground loops.  But, it is not going to make that much difference in performance or mileage.  But, it will cut down on the internal corrosion/plating in the cooling system.  I have the seven wire extra grounding kit on my 350Z and with drive by wire it has made a great difference.  But, yours has a normal throttle cable so it will only make the injectors work better.