Looking to move my battery to the trunk. Advice on parts/installation? What to buy? What not to do? I am not looking to spend the big money on a aluminum one $200 is too steep imo. Thanks
Do not get the summit battery box.....the cables and everything that comes with it are excellent parts....but the plastic box itself is a piece of crap that looks like crap as well.
I apologize for horning in on your thread 1Slow90coupe but this might be relavent to your question as well.
Question:
I see most folks mounting battery boxes on the right side of the car when they do the relocation. Why is that? Wouldn't it make more sense to mount the box on the left side of the hatch or trunk (the side that likes to raise up in the air under power)??
First off - if you're gonna race the car, most sanctioning bodies have pretty specific rules for battery box relocation - especially in hatchbacks - so check before you do something that won't pass tech.
I used a WalMart $6.99 marine battery box - heavy duty plastic. I fabricated mounts out of 1/8" aluminum strapping. I grounded it to a welded in lug in the trunk. For the hot side running to the front, I bought a 4 gauge set of high quality 25' jumper cables (very flexible) for about $19. I took the clamps off and stripped back the insulation -- and put the battery lug onto BOTH cables. So I'm running a double 4 gauge to the front of the car.
The car's been converted for over 3 years -- no charging or starting problems at all. I had maybe $35 in new materials in the conversion. But it took A LOT more time than I thought it would to carefully route cables, insulate things, etc. So take your time.
Daggar - if you were to put corner scales under one and move the battery from left to right you'd see it doesn't make a whole lot of difference which side you put it on. The chassis is generally stiff enough that a load of 40 lbs. or so placed in the back hits both tires equally. I'd put it where it looks the best/is easiest to access/is out of the way of other stuff. More important than side to side in my opinion (road racer coming out) is getting it as LOW in the car as possible. Mine's in the very bottom of my extra spare tire well on the passenger side.
I mounted mine on the drivers side. It was a lot easier to bolt it to the floor. On the passenger side, there is the gas fill and other stuff to contend with.
What Dean said, and also hold-over from the days when folks had open diffs and they wanted to get the weight over the right rear tire. They didn't know they could put it on the left and get just about the same effect.
Kind of like the story of someone cutting the ends off of a ham before roasting it - when asked why she replied her mom taught her to. Asked her mom - she said her mom did it too. Asked the grandma -- she smiled and said she did it because the old wood fired oven was too small for the ham and it wouldn't fit -so she cut the ends off. She couldn't understand why her grand-daughter was still doing it.
After I got mine installed -- my hot cable had to exit the trunk and run under the car -- I went back about 2 years later and took my F-body-style single 3" system off and put 2.5" duals on the car. Yup -- my path for the hot cable was right over the driver's side exhaust pipe. I had to route it up into the driveshaft tunnel, and then shield it with aluminum gutter flashing to be sure the heat didn't get to it. Fun.
Thanks for all the good info. I am going to have to put my on the left side due to my nitrous bottle sits on the right. What do you do with the ground lead up front. Just ground it to the body?
???Ground lead up front? Just be sure the engine and electrical system are well grounded to the chassis, and ground the battery to the chassis in the back. I also ran 3 10 gauge ground wires up front from the negative terminal of the battery to provide a more certain ground for my computer, one to the tranny/block, and one inside the car to the dash where a bunch of other stuff is grounded.
The alumium box isnt that expensive, whole kit from taylor with 1/0 wire only cost me i think $125. Dagger, i mounted my box on the right side because if you notice, the spare tire well is slightly off-center, more to the left and there is more room on the right side. I've seen them on the left, but with a notch, i didn't have a lot of room to work with/in to begin with.
Mine's on the passenger-side in the trunk. I'm not entirely sure it'd pass NHRA tech at the track, since I don't have an exterior cutoff switch, but otherwise, whoever did it did a pretty decent install. They bolted a metal plate base inside of a plastic marine battery box that allows the use of a pair of J-hooks with the top H-bar, and ran welding cable (can't remember the gauge off hand ... either 1 or 2, not sure) up to the starter solenoid up front. The original ground they had was lame - just used one of the bolts for the tail light housing to ground it to the body, sheesh - so I made a new solid metal-to-metal bolt to the frame by the shock tower and a second 4-gauge ground cable running to the quad shock mount.
It barely cranked over when I first bought it, but since beefing up the grounds, it has no charging problems (aside from the inherent issues with running a stock alt. with an electric rad. fan) and it starts like a champ ... well, at least it will when I replace the ValueCRAP starter in there with a bling-bling purty brand-new Duralast Gold unit, tomorrow morning.
As far as left or right location, I only found mine being on the passenger-side to be a PITA when I was fiddling with removing the fuel tank fill spout to put on a new tank grommet and a piece of side molding, but it makes for a nice, discreet hidey-hole that I store my spare clutch cable, jumper cables, and a few other odds n' ends in. It's also on the same side as my Eibach Drag Spring airbag, and even in a limited-slip rear car, the right tends to be what more folks worry about focusing their traction (due to rotational forces and torque or something, I suppose).
Oh yeah, and don't route your cable through the interior, obviously. Electrical fires are bad, especially in the passenger area. Ditto for running the cable along the passenger's side, parallel to the fuel lines. Something about a random fuel leak and a bad ground, followed by a burst of flame and/or explosion ... I dunno...