Redesigning the Firewall Rack

After redesigning the firewall battery rack with rotated batteries, I wrote down some installation instructions. For the past two days, I've been following my own instructions to see how well they work out.


Here are the four 1" x 3/16" x 5.5" bars that will be mounted to the shock towers


With the bars mounted to the shock towers, I cut the left and right angle iron supports. I bolted the rear end through the 2 3/4" piece of 1" galvanized pipe and used a clamp to hold the front to the bars on the shock towers.


Here's a similar view of the supporting angle-iron, but on the driver-side. Note that I had to carve out a much larger notch out of the rear motor mount to accomodate the supporting angle iron. I also had to cut an angled piece off the back of the supporting angle iron to not interfere with the brake lines under the brake-fluid reservoir.


After measuring the distance between the two side pieces, I cut four horizontal pieces of angle iron, measured the proper distance between them to fit the Lifeline batteries and clamped them in place.


Same structure but on the passenger side. The rear-most horizontal bar has a curved piece cut out of it to avoid touching the brake lines. With all pieces clamped in place, I could now draw through the holes in the horizontal bars to the underlying metal to properly drill bolt holes.


After marking and the holes on the left and right supports as well as the bars mounted to the shock towers, I disassembled the structure, drilled the holes and bolted it back together. With the structure bolted together, I now added the two angle-iron pieces on the right that jut out towards you. These are just clamped in place so I can mark holes on the angle-iron pieces.


With the marked holes drilled on the rightmost angle-iron supports, I bolted the far right one on. These supports that jut out towards the front of the car will hold a platform for all the electronics.


Here's a final test to make sure the batteries fit in and I still have hood clearance. With the batteries in, I was able to close the hood easily without any interference. Yay! It took me awhile to get this solution to work.

Next up: making the hold-downs for the front and firewall battery racks.