Hello...

My 74 2.0 liter turns over slowly all the time.The battery is charged and a new trans ground strap is in place. The question is...does the battery need to be grounded to the chassis or the engine or both?
Right now I have a short ground cable that goes from the battery to a chassis ground,and a longer cable that goes from the stud inside the quarter panel to the same chassis ground. Is this correct?

Thanks as always...
Mike

Typically the real issues is the starter is 40 years old.
I ran a new ground wire in addition to the chassis wire directly from the battery to the lower starter bolt.

Rich

I'll bump this up for more opinions....

Battery cables should be replaced every few years. They corrode from the inside and turn into a giant resistor. Put new cables on it and like above, add a second ground to the starter bolt.

You can also replace your starter with a new one but if your cables are bad it will turn the same speed.

Best thing to do would be run some voltage drop tests. They are easy to do and take out the guess work. All you need is a volt meter with long enough leads to go from point A to point B. For example, if you want to check your ground connection, hook your volt meter in parallel with the ground cable, say from the battery post to the body. Crank over the motor, if your volt meter reads any significant voltage, say more than a few tenths of a volt, you have a bad connection between the body and the negative post. Voltage that can't go through the bad connection will go through the volt meter. If you don't have a volt meter, take a set of jumper cables and use one side of them as a big jumper wire. Go negative battery to body, positive battery to the starter post, and so on. Most problems tend to be bad grounds as people tend to over look them and concentrate on the power side. Hope this helps keep you from replacing a bunch of good cables, or the starter.