Thanks, So Straight from starter bolt to Battery ?
If you can yes but you will still need earth's from gearbox to chassis to battery neg.
Somewhere on the block to chassis then somewhere on chassis to battery negative is 99% just as good really.
Just more contact areas that can go high resistance.
Ideal scenario is earth from bulkhead, earth from block, earth from body, earth from gearbox, earth from transfer box etc all going back to the battery. In practice this is expensive and impractical so the chassis is used to complete the earth circuit for some components. The engine for example is on rubber mounts as are the gearboxes and the circuit is broken at that point. So earth cables are used from the block to the chassis to bypass the rubber mounts.
Starter is mounted to the block with no rubber so an earth on the block going either straight to the battery or to the chassis would complete the circuit and the starter will work as long as the chassis has an earth cable somewhere on it going to the battery negative post.
You now have 3 earth contact points, if one goes gunky you may get poor starter performance.
It's how LR do it in the main.
Going straight from starter bolt to battery reduces contact points and increases reliability if you don't check earth much.
Problem is connecting extra wires to the battery, might not be easy.
I've got three earth's on my battery.
One to starter bolt
One to chassis
One to winch.
On chassis, one to gearbox ,one to bulkhead and one to block.
Never had an earth issue in 16 yrs.
