alot of us know here our battery trays rust to nothing and i heard there isnt a aftermarket piece to replace it so id like to see and hear how it was done because im in the process of doing mine and i want to make sure its done nice and neat!

thank you very much!

nick

 

plasma cutter/angle grinder to cut it out, then weld one in...

 

Here is how mine looked from underneath. It had a plastic tray spanning the area where the battery should sit.

 

Here are a couple of pictures of the repair

 

before:



during:



(That is the only tool I used)

Gone:



All better, almost done.



Eventally I coated it on both sides.

 

I replaced my tray last year. Ordered from classic industries.

 

did it really need to be replaced? it doesn't look that bad from the pics.

 

No offense but those welds are horrible.

 

I wanted to play it safe. It was worse on the bottom.

As for the welds. I know. I was teaching myslef how to. Earlier that week I bought the welder and a handbook. I tried my best. They are ugly, but they hold. There is nothing there now, and there never will be, so not like it has to hold up the world. Although I have stood on just that spot and nothing moved at all, very solid.

As time went on I learned how to weld much better. Check out my CD site, when I was building my first exhaust, 3" ture dual dumps, you can see how much better my welds have become. In that pic I stil didn't fully understand the concept of moving at the right speed. haha. They do look like ***. Good thing they are coated with POR-15 now and can not really be seen.




PS- I replaced it cuz it was kinda rusty and also cuz it had all those holes in it and I wasnted a nice flat piece there. 2 birds with 1 stone.

 

looks good i just gotta find the time between droppin this 350!

 

Well hopefully you grinded the welds down flush with the metal before you coated it. Even if the welds are crappy, when you grind it you may never even know.

 

I assure you they are holding just fine.

 

Anyone do a battery in the trunk with some kind of firewall instead of a battery box?

It's easy to put a steel panel in, but I was trying to think of something that could be removed quickly if I need to get to the battery.

Mathius

 

You can intall it where the spare goes in a few minutes. Real easy, and so you don't have to worry about the fumes, just get an optima. They don't release hydrogen like normal batteries do.

CHeck out my CD site. It is all there.

 

Fumes or not, AFAIK NHRA rules still dictate that the battery will be physically seperated from the driver compartment by means of a battery box or firewall. If I did a rear firewall, it'd be a hinged peice that laid flush with the rear hump and secured by dzus fasteners...probably 4 along the back and two on the sides. I can't remember if there is a NHRA specified gauge for firewall construction, but I'd go with atleast 14ga

 

Never used dzus before. Supposed to be pretty good. How quickly can they be removed?

Mathius

 

Just put it in a box in the spare tire area, takes all of 10 minutes and will pass any tech inspection. Very easy to run a kill switch to it as well. I did on mine.

 

Not sure if GM still sells it. But mine had a very slight amount of surface rust on it and I purchased a new tray from GM. I'll take a couple of pictures of it today. I have yet to install it... Almost don't need it but my car has zero rust and when I saw a tad bit I had to get a new part.

I'll also put up the GM part number later.

 

BMR sells a bracket for the battery that fits where the spare tire goes. It's around $100 US. Looks pretty cool.

 

this is what i did, its a AFCO piece from summitracing, and it fit very well surprisingly...


just had to make a small triangular filler plate and the rest just welded right to the car.

i forgot to put in the j-bolt on the fender side, had to take off the fender to get it in

 

For all that time invested why didn't you just move it to the back and have some real fun, fab'n something there.

 

That thing looks a lot like the afco piece if you cleaned it up and powerdercoated it.

It was designed a few years ago when people expected that the NHRA/IHRA were going to relax battery regs if you used dry cell or other batteries that weren’t vented and didn’t have what to leak, but as far as I know, it never happened, so technically that bracket isn’t legal at the dragstrip without a firewall.