Has anyone tried to put a 4th gen battery tray and coolant reservoir on their 3rd gen? I was at a friend's house this weekend and he bought one to put on his '91 Z28, but he was saying that you have to cut out the metal that the battery sits on in the factory position. I'm kind of scared to do this because I'm worried it will rust really bad, or look bad because of a hack cutting job. If anyone has done it post pictures and give me a little summary of an easy way to tackle this.

 

Ive done both.

The coolant bottle is clean. Its very easy to install. Yes it requires you to cut an oddly shaped hole in your battery tray on the passenger side. You also have to cut half of the fender support that is directly below the tray. It doesnt seem to affect anything in a negative way though.

If you take your time cutting, and paint the edges, you wont have rust issues. It also wont look bad. 4th gens have the hole there already. Once the tray is in place, it looks factory. Once the battery is in place, you cant tell anything was every done.

This is on my old car...not having the stock thirdgen bottles really cleans things up.





This is after I wrecked my car...so you can see it in place.


On my newer car, the battery tray was WAY too clean to cut into. So I opted to just install a new thirdgen overflow bottle and call it a day.

cont'd....

 

For the washer bottle, this is alittle more involved if you want it to look really good. You will have to modify the braces behind the bumper. now...I dont know how it would work with a camaro. Im not totally familiar with the bracing behind the bumper cover and below the hood support area. I had to completely rebuild my triangle brace in my firebird. But here is how it turned out.

This is all you see.




My triangle brace.







Doesnt look too bad with the new coolant bottle. Maybe some day Ill do the 4th gen bottle on this car...but not when the tray is perfect.



The coolant bottle is super easy. The washer bottle is a bit of an adventure.

J.

 

I'm thinking the washer bottle wouldn't be as involved for a Camaro as it was for your Firebird, because ours aren't all metal in front of the radiator. We have the dual snorkle intake and there is a huge hole right there where the intake sits on top of the front air dam.

I guess I'll have to just try it out and see where it goes. I'm probably picking up both bottles on Thursday and will start the modifications this weekend.

 

Yeah...like I said Im not sure what all is up front on the camaros. You should be able to figure something out.

What I almost did... I was thinking about relocating my battery to the back. Then I was going to put one of those Ford Explorer tanks on the battery tray. One of those tanks that has the washer bottle and overflow in one unit. Thats the most simple clean solution...except that you have to relocate the battery first.

You COULD put the battery on the driver's side, since there is a tray over there too....but I couldnt due to the LS1 fuse boxes and misc things I had to put over there.

J.

 

deffinitely worth it i got my tank from a local jy for 5 bucks you will have to make another brace to hold your fender secure though

 

If you are takling about the little bracket under the battery tray...I never replaced it with anything. I just cut the one "leg" off and left it be. Never saw any ill effects.

But...if you have the time, making a bracket wouldnt hurt I suppose.

J.

 

I did this last year, my only issue is now I have a sheet metal screw holding the battery puck down. I supposed I need a nut welded to the bottom in order to hold it more secure. I drilled a new hole for my fender support and reversed the bracket...

 

Oh...yeah I guess I should have mentioned something about the hold down bolts. I was able to tap the metal for the one hold down bolt. For the hold down puck, I tapped the metal, but after tightening it for the 10th time, the threads gave up.

So...my plan was to weld a nut underneith for both hold down bolts. The hold down puck bolt doubles as both the hold down bolt, and a bolt to keep the entire unit in place.

Its still not too bad of a job.

J.

 

The coolant bottle can be mounted under the battery tray. Seen it, I have one ready to go in when the weather gets nice. This way you don't have to mess with cutting a hole and all that.

 

You mean the stock 3rd gen bottle? I have never seen that before. Do you mind showing me how and explaining?

 

No he means the 4th gen bottle. Ive seen it done too, but if I recall, it required heating and tweaking the overflow bottle spout, and it put the cap/spout fill in a hard place to reach. In my case, it would have also made the coolant overflow line too short. Im running the LS1 radiator, so it was convenient to not have to mess with that hose.

There are pics on here somewhere of the bottle mounted under the tray....

J.

 

Yeah it is the 4th gen tank, and it's a lot easier to heat the spout than to cut the proper size/shape hole in the battery tray. Location of the spout is fine.

 

True...I guess tweaking the spout wouldnt be too bad. When it came down to it, my battery tray was alittle rusty. So cutting it out wasnt a big deal. I also had the 4th gen car sitting next to my thirdgen, so making the hole the exact size was cake.

Either way its a pretty simple way to clean things up a little bit. And the part is cheap... You can get them new for reasonable prices even.

J.

 

I swapped to the 4thgen unit awhile ago to get rid of the stocker and it was really simple. Just busted out the cutoff wheel and started small. Welded a nut to the frame rail for the hold down bolt. But my battery was on the other side of the bay stock so I don't have to worry about the puck.

 

You DONT have to cut out your tray.I did both 4th gen bottle swap yearrrssss ago.I dont know if the post is still on here.The 4th gen batt tray/coolant bottle will fit under the 3rd gen batt tray.I used the threaded bungs already on the 3rd gen tray to secure the 4th gen unit in place.You have to heat the neck of the 4th gens bottle to clear the fender.It fit snug between the fender & battery.NO cutting, no drilling needed.The windshield washer bottle is even easier.Especially if you dont have the snorkle to deal with.

Here's my OP, but some of the pics are deleted.
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/body...her-fluid.html

 

Hey, BlueZee28, is that my avatar picture? I saw it at the top of the thread and thought this was some thread I started. It's all good though, just threw me off for a second. Good choice for an engine swap, if I do say so myself.

 

Hey dude, are you from Tacoma? Were you the guy that was in Bruce Titus Chevrolet last year looking for the cable? Have you gotten your swap done yet?

 

Ya I ganked your avatar. I might not have the motor after this weekend though, because the seller told me it was from a 2001 truck which I could use the LS1 T56 with, but it's actually a '99 or '00 block and the crankshaft is too long to use an LS1 T56. I'm trying to see if anyone knows if an LT1 T56 will work.

 

Yep that was me. It sucks though, I'm not any further along on the swap than I was back then. I ended up applying for college for this spring, so I decided to put the swap on hold for financial reasons. For now I'm just gonna finish up the T-top seals (<---Way bigger project than I had hoped) and run it as is. I'll probably pick it back up again over the summer; and hopefully get a job to pay for it too, .

That sucks, would it be easier to get a crank from an '01+ engine and just swap it out? Also, didn't most long crank motors also have iron heads...?

 

here's my washer bottle in a camaro......easy job....
didn't take detailed pic's of process though sorry

 

Well I still have it...and I might be doing that crankshaft switcharoo. I called my shop and they said they could change it out with new rod bolts for less than $400. I might go that route. On the other hand, I listed the block for sale and may be able to turn it around for a small profit since I got such a good deal on it.

 

i was going to do the 4th gen, but bought one of the lil deals from the HELP! section and mounted it under the pass sidebumper.
its mounted on the battery tray to the portion that sticks out into the headlight bucket.
you cant see it from above unless you put your nose on the headlight brace.

 

Reviving an old thread I know but what an awesome, factory appearing mod!

I plan to do both 4th gen reservoirs to open up the engine bay, anyone know how deep the washer reservoir is? Curious if or how much interference I may run into with a FMIC...