5-90 said:
Perhaps. But, doesn't engine oil conduct some small amount of electricity? It's not actually designed as an electrical insulator per se (oil-cooled transformers & electronics don't use regular engine oil...) so the effects would seem to become unpredictable. This goes toward spurious signals - mainly "leakage" from the ground and a slight "floating ground" that can cause headaches.
On the long stretch of wires between the crimp connectors on the ends
you could soak the wires in anything you pleased,
with no significant effect. The electrons are going to flow down hill, from the higher potential to the lower potential across the outer surface of each and every tiny wire. Does not matter if the wires are dirty or clean, it is the low conductivity copper they follow. THe more copper wires, the better, which is part of the reason your cables work better than the OEMs.
What does matter is the choke points, where there is only a small surface area for those electrons to move across, like a huge dance hall filled to capacity and then all of a sudden they all head for one small exit door. In this case the exit door, or choke point, is the actual contact points (surface area again!) where some of the wires at the ends make contact with some of the crimp connectors surface area.
Imagine 200 people per minute going in and out of one small door at each end of the dance hall. One inlet door and one outlet door, one way doors, and a room big enough for 10,000 people, but the dance hall currently only has 300 people. The bulk ground wire is the uncrowded dance hall. The doors are the crimp connectors on each end.
Then imagine someone starts a fire at each doorway, LOL. :flame:
The fire analogy at the doors is surface corrosion at the contact points between the wires at each end and the crimp connectors, and between the crimp connectors and the engine block, head and firewall contact surface.
Also note that the engine gets hot, like 190 to 230 F. Electrons don't like to travel through hot connections. The resistance goes up as the temperature increases. So trying to force them from a cool firewall through a 200 F iron head bolt on the head and through the small surface iron contact on the head, is like trying to piss on a bonfire!:laugh3:
:flame:
In summary, it's the terminations that matter the most, as they have the smallest contact surface area, and that is where the heat builds up, and keeping them clean and free of oxidation is the key to success. Green slime in the middle of a long multicore wire (assuming the green slime has not eaten through the wires!) has little effect on the ground path.
Lastly, the larger ground wires are needed to keep the ground wire back voltage as low as possible due the computer and its sensors being so ultra sensitive to as little as 0.01 volts of standing voltage on a ground wire. Head lights and brakes lights and turn signals toss a lot of electrons through the ground paths! But, you could put huge 0 gauge wire on the ground and it would be a waste if the crimp connectors were not solid, tight, and if the block, head and firewall connections were not bare, clean, unoxidized metal.