So who here has relocated thier battery to the trunk area ? And what problems have you had if any <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="gr_stretch.gif" />

 

Mine has been there for a year now with no problems at all.

 

did you use a dry cell? has the track given you any crap about it? I've thought of doing this, but don't want some guy at the track tell me I can't race cause my battery is in the back.

Oh, did you install a shutoff switch?

 

Six months and no problems for me. This is a lot of detailed work but worth it. The car is smoother on corners now. My car is a daily driver -- a '98 1LE and the 1LE springs in the back are too stiff without some extra weight in the back.

A 30 pound battery moved 15 feet is a major change, moving weight so the car is better balanced. It is about the same as a 3" rear offset of the engine and trans.
I used 1/0 welding cable. I did the math on a 140 amp draw to select 1/0. The cable is completely encased inside 3/4" "nonmetalic electrical tubing" (blue plastic flex-tube from Home Depot). Including the battery box, terminal and transition boxes, clamps and other parts it was about $120 -- the best bang for buck mod yet, if you care about that stuff. I used the same electrical connections at the front of the car to avoid screwing it up, and the connections are inside grey plastic electrical boxes so it doesn't look too crummy in the front. It took me all day to put it together because it takes a lot of trial and error to thread the cables inside the tubing, and get it right to the front so they don't sag below the frame. Right now it is held with about 10 "150 lb." cable ties but I am going to get a cable tray welded in so it looks right.

The cable went through the back of the body at the left-top-side of the spare tire well, with an offset-type grey-plastic electrical box bolted to the body, so the cable does not get sawed through by vibration over time, and then the cable goes up to the front along the right frame rail and subframe connector. The cable was crammed into a space at the top of the rear wheel well, but I screwed a sheet metal shield over the cable to protect it from stones in the wheel well.

The battery box and top are plastic and sold for boats, from Academy. The box is on the far right of the "t-top well" in the back, so I can put the spare tire back if I want to. The box is bolted to the body, and sits on a small square piece of rubber, cut out of a rubber mud flap, to give a soft conformable mount for the box, which is very lightweight and not-very-solid plastic. The box can be easily notched to allow the thick cables to come straight out the side, toward the spare tire well, where the cables make a small 90 degree turn to go through the body into a very small space, with about 2" of clearance, that exists between 2 fairly solid frame rail-like stuctures on the outside of the passenger compartment. I designed this to minimize the danger from a worst case scenario, to avoid a crash-crush that could sever the positive cable (which gets really ugly if it arcs to the body and ignites any leaking gas). There are undoubtedly other ways to do this though.
The original positive/negative leads in the front are just filed flat (OEM they have little ears to dig into the lead battery posts) and bolted with 3/8" bolts, washers and nuts, then set inside notched out grey plastic electrical boxes, with "blank" (no holes) grey covers.
I bought a new Optima yellow battery.

The battery box is just mounted with small holes drilled through the box, the rubber mat underneath the box, and the well-floor. The bolts are fine thread 6/24th" and 1 and a 1/2" long. Anything will work. I have long enough arms to reach a screwdriver into the bolts in the well and at the same time hold a wrench on the underside nut. Otherwise you may need a helper to tighten the nuts.

None this is beautiful-looking, even to me. But this isn't a show car so it only needs to be functional. It needs a tube and a cut-off switch for drag racing, I guess. IMO a cut-off switch is completely out of place and dangerous on a street car so I don't have it.

I decided (but I am not certain) that an LS-1 computer, accessories and engine needs to draw a lot of current from the OEM negative attachment-point in the front. Does anyone know from their own experience that a non-OEM negative attachment-point will cause not problems with a mostly stock LS-1? When I used a non-OEM attachment-point in my '89 Firebird, the on-board computer stopped working, and had to be replaced, about every 20,000 miles, but it was not possible for me to determine if the non-OEM negative ground actually caused this problem.

I have a short supplemental 4 gauge negative ground attached in the back too, but my purpose was safety rather than to carry the entire current load.

 

Go through Summit and order the Moroso relocation kit. Then order Summits wiring kit, not the Moroso wiring kit (cheaper that way). You can order the cutoff switch from Summit too.

 

Moved mine. It does wind up being a detail job, especially if you want to be rules compliant. It wound up being a PIA overall. I'm glad I did, but not sure I'd do it again. I am with Tom, the car does handle better with the battery in the back - my car is a daily driver as well.

I used a 'box' from AFCO mounted in the spare tire well with a Reactor dry cell(1236). Mounting a wet cell in the passenger compartment simply isn't safe IMO. Be aware that it's a long cable run from the spare tire well to the front of the car, I suggest running a minimum 0/1 cable to the stock battery location. I ran my cable in the interior and through the firewall through the existing hole/gromet behind the PCM to a mounting lug near the factory battery location. I also ran 1ga to the underhood fuse center and a 1ga cable from there directly to the alternator. I reused the stock starter cable. I grounded the block to the chassis at the motor mount and also grounded the battery to the rear frame rail. I used Flaming Rivers' Combo-Kill switch mounted in the rear fascia panel for the cut-off location.

Rules Compliance: NHRA and IHRA both require that vehicles with relocated batteries have a rear-mounted kill switch that cuts power to all electrical systems (fuel pump, ignition, etc.) and shuts the car off. Be aware that simply disconnecting the battery will not shut down an LS1, it will continue to run from the alternator w/o missing a step, so you also have to cut power from the alternator or to the ignition when the switch is thrown. NHRA requires that the battery be separated from passenger compartment by a bulkhead (yes there is a material spec in the rule book) or in a sealed box vented to the outside of the vehicle. Metal boxes are fine, and Moroso presently has the only NHRA approved plastic box. IHRA simply requires that batteries in located in the passenger compartment be of a sealed dry-cell type (ie Optima, Reactor, Dynabatt, etc.).

 

Thanks for your input on this guys <img border="0" alt="[cheers]" title="" src="graemlins/gr_cheers.gif" />

 

Great write ups guys!