I've been meaning to move my battery for ages but never seemed to find the time, but with the nationals comming up and the Hill Climb Champs heating up I really needed to do it to balance the car a little better since I have removed a heap of weight from the back. I had intended to get all fancy and run the cables through the firewall and even got a proper isolated connection to do it but after having a quick look at how much crap there is on the inside of the firewall I gave up. I'll do it properly when I strip the dash to remove all the A/C gear that is no longer in use. Enough of the words......how does it look......... How it goes I'll have a better idea of after tomorrows MSCA event at Winton.
oops cool job wanted to see how others went about it. must post some pics of my set up so far. cheers wayne ps good luck tomorrow at winton let us no how you go
looks good man, any morre pics of and info on the setup you did? like where you ran the cables, did you go batt to starter or something else? did you leave the original cabling there or did you remove it all ? also where is the fuse ??? also why did you run the neg cable so long ?? why not just straight to the body close to the battery ?
you still need earth points at the motor gearbox and fuse boxs the better your earth points the better and quicker your electric's will work look up hks circle earth kits worth the time and money if doing a battery relocation looks racey too
did you put your catch can where the old battery went do you have much voltage drop starting it from so far away
Some answers and some more pictures. My current catch can is still in the drivers side wheel arch, but I plan to get a bigger one made to fit where the battery was. I currently have an additional earth point for the engine loom. All voltages look good and the car still runs nicely. I ran the cables down the passangers side of the car and out through the hole behind the kick panel with the rest of the loom. Wasn't too hard to get the cables through with a little bit of WD for assistance. From there I went straight into the engine bay and joined to the original wiring, nice and simple and utilises all existing fuses so I didn't need to add any additional ones. I toyed with the idea of just earthing the battery but decided I wanto to make sure that the engine bay wiring was given the best earth I could, which is why I ran the negative cable all that way. If the car had exibited any electrical quirks I was ready to add an additional earth at the battery but everything seems fine and the car didn't miss a beat at Winton on sunday, even at full noise with wipers and demister running (bloody rain). In the car.... Engine bay (will get cleaned up)......
Any reason it was not mounted on the floor behind the passenger seat to get it quite a bit lower? Also, why not a smaller battery while you were at it? I love your fuel filter too.
It is where it is because I was trying to get the weight as far back as possible and still keep it low. I stuck with the existing battery because I already had it and didn't want to waste the money buying a new one. When it dies I will explore the option of going to a smaller one.
I had it made by Trik Fab in Dandenong. I took a heap of measurements and then drew up a plan of what I wanted and they did the rest.
setup is fine pete although you still need a fuse in the positive cable. two things that are implied when doing this... 1. put a fuse in the positive cable if ran for metres (that cable is live through the car, in case of an accident can be nasty etc) 2. put a fuse in the positive cable if changing cable sizes (if it has been) other than that, i would put another earth point close as possible to the battery.. but like you said u havnt experienced any probs yet and if you do you will.
Good point about the fuse in the event of an accident, I hadn't considered it from that point. I was concentrating on making sure that the mount was strong enough to survive in the event of a big impact. I'll look into mounting an inline fuse.
Looks good, but I'd consider a beefier tie-down if I were you. I'd hate to see the damage that battery would do in a crash, and given it's only secured by two thin rods there's a very real chance it could come loose in a hard impact.
Yes, beefier tiedowns are on the list, although with the tray setup the way it is the car would have to bounce on it's roof for them to feel the full impact.
nice, let me know what size fuse you go with. i was trying to find out what fuse would be sufficient to cope with the current the zed draws but couldnt find it so ive gone with a 200amp circuit breaker for now. id like to find out what the zed cranks at and whats the zed drains normally... obviously having stereo, amps etc will draw more current but should give an idea...
