So the other day i was changing my oil, and in the engine bay, noticed a ground wire that wasnt attached to anything. It's attached to the body, but the other end just hangs...i've had the car for about 2 years now and never noticed it until now...

my question is...where the hell does it go? anyone have any idea?

i've attached photos of the wire, its black and yellow

pictures posted sideways...dont know why...but the wire is right behind the passenger headlight assembly.

 

That looks like it's supposed to be attached to the block via the valve cover bolt in the corner. To be perfectly honest, I don't specifically know that to be true, as I'm pretty new to this car, but being that it's a ground wire, it's preffectly safe to attach it to anything, except a positive lead. That would be bad. There are a lot of motors that have quite a few grounds between them and the chassis, and the reason being that a lot of strange occurances have been solved by adding addition grounds. You may not like this last statement, but think of it as a general proof thing, my civic, a 98 hatch, has the exact same thing on it. A ground wire that attaches behind the drivers headlight to a corner of the valve cover. Like I said, it's not going to hurt anything to attach it anywhere that isn't a positive lead. If it's already attached to the chassis, and there's nothing else it's obviously supposed to be attached to, it's probably for the motor.

How did it get disconnected? Someone probably replaced the valve cover gasket and forgot to reattach the wire.

 

To be honest i never noticed it until a few days ago....so not really sure, your right though, maybe it will fix some strange occurrences as my car does have some! lets hope. thanks for the response

 

No problem, keep me posted and if you have some time, either before or after you get a chance to fix the wire, let me know some of the other things that are acting strange. A really good friend of mine just got a Lancer, so I'm trying to find out about all of their little idiosyncrasies. Anything helps, plus might run into something else I can help with.