My PC680 finally started giving out a bit. It was possible to charge it and use it for a few days, but it was giving out too quickly between charges. So it made it a bit over 2 years of abuse, which isn't bad. I had been wanting to re-work my old battery relocate job anyways, so I took the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and both replace and re-relocate my battery.
My old relocation (pictured earlier in this thread) had two things going for it that I don't like anymore:
(1) The far rear location was more ideal for weight distribution for me, because I was placing a heavy tool/emergency bag in the forward part of the trunk on the street that outweighed the battery significantly, and that left room for it.
(2) After removing all the other crap in the trunk (subwoofer, spare, etc) there was a fair amount of vibrational noise coming through the trunk floor, so I had Dynamatted most of the trunk to make up for it.
Now that the car is increasingly becoming more track-ish (where the tool bag is not an issue, and the noise level isn't either), I've moved the battery forward to the same rough location as travisjb's install (but using the solid aluminum box I used before). Technically this is also safer in the event I get rear-ended. I also stripped out the Dynamat (leaving some ugly tar residue I may go after someday with some degreaser).
I also got rid of all the hokey hardware store connections I made before (they worked, but probably more resistance than necessary) and soldered on proper terminals and connections this time around, and reduced the overall positive cable run length.
I'll start with basic pics of the new install. These two pics are the overview of the new install. Notice the ugly tar residue from trying to remove Dynamat. All cabling is still solid copper 1/0 gauge stuff. The battery terminals and the ground lug are soldered to the cables using solder slugs, and the terminals got color-coded heat-shrink wrap and rubber covers. The battery itself now has Odyssey's own add-on standard SAE brass terminals to fit regular ring-style battery terminal connectors.
Getting this box with its large flat edges mounted in this position turned out to be pretty tough. The metal surface of the car here isn't at all flat, and there's no easy way to reach the "inside" of that channel to put nuts on bolts. My compromise solution was:
(1) Using the larger circular holes the car comes with, it's possible to barely reach the spot of the center bolt holes of my box. I drilled these, taped the M6 bolts (with large washers) to my fingertips, and managed to delicately put the bolts in from the rear. So at least the center hole on each side of the box has a good solid bolted connection.
(2) For the outer 4 holes that can't be reached by fingertip, I used self-drilling sheetmetal screws, 1/4" wide by 1" long. These are tricky and I don't trust them as much for holding power, but they do in a pinch. The tricky part is it's easy to overshoot the drilling phase and strip the hole so that the bolt won't hold. You have to be very careful and try to back off the drill before it fully sinks the bolt, and then switch to a wrench. I got 3/4 of the holes done right, and the lower left one I stripped, so it's empty in the pics. I'll go back to this later with a slightly larger diameter (5/16") regular sheet metal screw to fix it.
(3) To get the box to hold flat as it's compressed into place by the 6 screws, and to reduce any bouncing or vibration, I added some closed cell foam weatherstrip onto the metal of the car before mounting the battery. I bought a couple different thicknesses (3/8" and 1/2"), and basically put it underneath the battery and in the "low spots" on the wall. It's obvious when you're doing it in person.
As for the ground lug on the other side of the channel: I re-used an existing factory threaded hole and the matching bolt, which originally held an audio amplifier bracket, and sanded off the paint in the vicinity for a good connection.
Pics of this stuff up close:
Parts lists from my various parts orders for this:
From
Del City:
(the extra negative terminal stuff was to make a charging cable: the big 25-amp charger instructions say you need one on the negative side for a little resistance when using it).
Code:
Qty Item Price Item Total
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1 8920 Liquid Flux, 2 oz No Clean (1 MIN) $5.05 $5.05
4 900935 Battery Terminal Solder Slug, 1/0 Ga, Bla$0.83 $3.32
1 901715 Straight Terminal Insulators, 2 & 1/0 Ga,$0.75 $0.75
2 901725 Straight Terminal Insulators, 2 & 1/0 Ga,$0.75 $1.50
1 907445 3/8" Heavy-Duty Copper Lug, 1/0 Ga (1 MIN$1.91 $1.91
1 909145 Straight Barrel Battery Terminal, 1/0 Ga,$3.13 $3.13
2 909155 Straight Barrel Battery Terminal, 1/0 Ga,$3.13 $6.26
1 980735 6" Red Triple Wall Heat Shrink, 2 - 4/0 G$1.88 $1.88
1 980745 6" Black Triple Wall Heat Shrink, 2 - 4/0$1.88 $1.88
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And from Amazon, the SAE terminal adapters for the PC680:
Amazon.com: Brass SAE Automotive Battery Terminal Set for Hawker Odyssey Batteries: Electronics
And of course the closed-cell rubber weatherstrip stuff, the self-drilling screws, and various regular M6-sized machine screw hardware all came from a local hardware store (Ace, in this case).
Also, if you've never soldered battery terminals to cables before: the solder slugs make it much easier, and you need a torch (a handheld propane torch is fine) to heat it all up. There's some youtube videos of the process you can google up.