Grounding cable question

[FreightTrain]

While doing the Horizonal Climb under the truck doing the grease thing I found a quite large ground cable hanging down.Where does it bolt to?Looks like a flat stainless braid even with the rear of the engine.Wonder if this is one of my Power drains when all the switches are off.......

 

[pa.rich]

I have a mysterious power drain on my 5 ton . Unless the battery is diconnected, it will go dead overnite,"PITB" pain in the butskie

 

[acetomatoco]

If you put a load meter on the positive cable and disconnect the loads one at a time you will find your mystery consumer in a hurry... Most folks forget to turn off their dash lights and this is the mystery drain..However with the old 25 amp generator and regulator setup there is always a small drain thru the regulator.. not with the 60 amp setup however. ACE

 

[cranetruck]

The grounding philosophy is simple, connect all metal parts of the vehicle to the negative battery terminal.
Some parts need to flex a lot and are connected with braided straps, other parts are not flexing so much and any cable can be used, finally metal parts are bolted together with star washers to make permanent electrical connections.
The size of the cables depend on the current requirements, the motor to frame must be heavy and flexible to handle the starter motor current as must the battery to frame cable.

The strap you are seeing may be the engine to frame connection and carries the starter motor current, an important connection.

A missing ground connection will not drain the batteries.

 

[alphadeltaromeo]

It's been said a buncho times...but as I'm new to mechanics, etc...SS has some real sharp folk and I have my notepad out taking notes on many of these topics...I'm like a lil sponge soaking it all up. I'm just hoping that my brain has enough capacity to take it all in *wink*