Rear battery boxes

I completely scrapped the location of batteries in the rear passenger seating area. This poses two problems, first batteries favorite position is not laying sideways but standing upright. Second the limited space made me forget about padding and the batteries were fixes very tightly. I've since learned that someday somewhere in some car, a battery will bloat, and if there is no side to side room whatsoever, cracking may ensue. Finally having 4 cable runs to facilitate 4 locations for blocks of batteries is hard to deal with from a BMS standpoint, and also could cause minor issues with charging. In short complication rarely pays off. So keeping 26 cells in the front for now, everything else will go in back.

Just starting new rear boxes:


Bending metal with break thingy...

Rubber mounting, I got some flat rubber , kinda looks like tire rubber but has thread instead of steel inside it.


Unexpected Feline Supervisor:


comparision of welded boxes to bend metal with no sides yet:







I cut a massive hole in the rear trunk area sheet metal of my Cortina, where the old gas tank hole was. The new much larger hole runs in-between the leaf springs and just behind the rear differential.

Cut, bent and welded a bunch of 16 gauge steel sheet (wore a respirator for the galvanized pieces). Thus creating 5 horizontal boxes which hang down 5 inches from the original trunk floor. The boxes hold horizontal parallel rows of batteries, which finally appear like one square pack, except for a small gap for the final row making room for the leaf spring shackles.

The leaf does not pass under the boxes, the edges of both are 1 inch apart.

I also removed the leaf springs and delivered them to Denver Spring company to have one leaf added. I had previously lengthened my spring shackles which made my car driveable but the leafs were flat, not good.

I have not painted the boxes, some are galvinized which helps but some are raw steel and need primer. Plus all the cracks etc need foam padding and/or some method of sealant.

Then finally a magic wand is needed to create "the perfect lid", for starters that will end up being some plywood lined with foam from the battery shipping boxes.