Batty about the Battery.

(Or so some people think so)

Joey and I have had the idea to put the battery in the boot instead of in front of the passenger as the video tells you. We put our thoughts onto the RHOCar discussion board and it caused a lively and very amusing debate as to the pro's and con's of our idea. Some people were for and some against (Mind you the "against" were certainly the most vocal!)
There are a number of reasons for our decision to do it this way, make your own mind up if you are with us or not.
If you look at the first picture you will see the battery tray as per "Big Jims" instructions, Oh sorry I mean Robin Hood instructions, There is not a massive amount of room in the "Glovebox" area and you are restricted to what size heater you fit in because of the bend in the firewall.
Also as we are intending splitting the bonnet and having a fixed scuttle it will make an easier path to secure the top bit to as the firewall will be straight across not kinked.
We also feel that the extra weight in the boot area will not do any harm and may even help to stop the back end sliding out on hard acceleration.

This is where we plan to fit our battery, on the Left hand side of the boot area, We feel this would be a good place to slot it in.
Someone suggested getting a plastic battery container from a caravan shop which was a pretty good idea but as we want ours to slot right into the side of the car we decided to make our own "Aluminium" job

This is going to be the side wall of the battery container, I have cut some nicks in the bottom flange so the whole thing will bend ito shape.

And here it is fully bent ready to fit into our battery space,

This is it temporarily clamped into its place, It will be trimmed down as necessary once the sides have been measured and fitted. We are being careful to keep clear of where the petrol tank fits, but if we need to we can fit the tank over to the right a bit for extra clearance.

And here it is with the "Battery bay floor" in place. Again we will trim it down to suit once fully assembled.

And this is the way we are sealing the "Battery Bay" it will stop any water penetration and Isolate the battery completely from the boot/ fuel tank area.

This is the parts that will rivet together to make our custom "Battery tray".

This is the front panel! I think, or is it the back, no its not the side but...

And here is how it fills the space nicely, the battery fits in the middle part so there is room either side for a clamp to hold it tight.

We needed a support beam to hold the inboard side of the battery box, We are going to weld some angle pieces onto the chassis Using our special "Stainless welding rods that were kindly given to us by Rob from work", cheers mate,
(See it is true, The Navy never leave their mates behind. Ha Ha.)
Here Joey is welding up the beam before we fit it to the car.

And here is the finished beam, with the angles fitted. They will be welded where it meet's the chassis downtubes.

Here it is fitted to the car, the beam is held about an inch and a half inwards so it holds the battery box nicely. We put one bolt to hold the box firmly onto the beam, The top of the Battery Box is attached directly to the chassis.
I tested the strength of the beam by standing on it and it coped with my 16 stone so It will comfortably hold a battery.

The front of the battery is held down with a clamp as shown, We can permanently attach this one and the battery slots into place and then we can attach the rear one.

And this is the rear Battery clamp, This will be a nut and bolt job, We will be able to reach the nuts from below the car.
We could fit a small tool caddy in this slot, Mmm now thats an idea!

This is what it looks like with the rear panel on, Joey and I both feel that this was worth the extra effort and we have utilised a bit of space at the back which would often not be used.

Much later on we made a battery securing strap using some metal strapping (Which I dont know what its called) and the RHE Bonnet catch as supplied with the kit its ideal for the job and will suffice for SVA.
You may notice that the battery has changed, well this is because we aquired a Metro Diesel minus the battery and we sold it on using our Donor Sierra's battery and bought a brand new one with some of the profit we made on the sale.

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