Battery Relocation Terminals???

[Blackcrow64]

Ok guys, I got a battery relocation kit and am moving my battery to my hatch. There is one problem that I have been trying to figure out though. How do I make and or mount terminals in the engine bay for me to run to my battery? I was thinking about it and I don't want the terminals just swinging around freely in the engine bay less they swing into something and ground themselves. I also can't mount them to anything to the engine bay because that'll end up grounding them also...

Do they make a special terminal to solve this problem or am I gonna have to come up with my own creation? Anyone else made their own terminals to solve this?

[xavier3jr]

just get a big ass connector and vut the terminals off of the stock cables connect the old cables to hte new and run them to the hatch.

[1stGenRocks]

lots of dodge/chrylers have the battery mounted in the lower fender and have remote terminals up top. some gm's do it too. just go to a junkyard and buy a set of them

[Blackcrow64]

Ok, cool... If I can't find any around here is there anything else I could do for it?

[ez1286]

Well on my eclipse (I didn't do this) the old terminal is conneceted to the new wire and is just tapped up in the engine bay. This probably isn't the best way but it could work for a while.

[kjewer1]

What I did, and there may be some picture on my site that help, is pick up a car stereo type distribution block. The one I chose had a 1/2 guage input with a 4 guage tap on each side (before the fuses), and 4 fused outputs with 8 guage connections.

I ran the 2ga wire from the battery up into the 2ga input on the block. I then ran the 4 guage starter wire from the unfused 4ga tap to the starter and put a ring lug on the starter end (my stock starter wire had frayed a bit at the starter end and I would occassionaly get an arc to the block or starter or something, so this was necessary for me anyway. Also, it unfused on the block, but still covered by the main fuse/breaker at the battery).

On the output end I removed the set screws and installed regular bolts of the same thread. I then put the 2 ring terminal that come from the underhood fuse box (two ~12 ga white wires each) and put each one on a bolt with a 40-60 amp or so fuse on it. The other two of the 4 outputs were unused, but one could easily be used for other accessories.

This was a very clean, very safe setup, and looked perfectly professional. I highly recomend a solution like this over just bolting the wires together and wrapping electrical tape around them like so many poeple do, which does work but can be a bit scary

[Blackcrow64]

Awesome... I like that one a lot... I think I'll look around and see what I can find.

[SLoe]

Bulkhead connectors get em at summit. clicky Most reliable solution IMO. NHRA legal too.

[blk_srt]

What I'm doing is using the power cable that I had running my system since it goes from the hatch to the engine bay and basically putting the battery on the other side and making all of my connections.

[Blackcrow64]

Yeah I have some like 2 gauge cables for everything and I know where to run them and how to get em through the firewall and everything... But once the battery is in the hatch and the cables are in the engine bay there are no "battery terminals" to connect the cables to. You can't go connected them to any type of metal bracket that would be mounted on anything cause it would ground out my power cable. I have everything else figured out. I think I'm gonna find what Kevin was talking about and try that.

[SLoe]

Ok you have effectively confused me. IDK what you are talking about now. Put some regular ring connectors on that shit man, and stop looking for battery terminals. Post some pics or something, cause I don't see where you are having a problem. Bulkhead, or distribution block gonna accomplish teh same thing.

[kjewer1]

He is wondering how to terminate the cable coming up from the trunk. I guessed that was the problem since I spent a lot of time looking into a nive clean way to do it without cutting up the stock harnessing, since I like my mods to be reversable whenever possible. A friend of mine just put a lug on the cable and ran a bolt through it and the cars ring terminals and wrapped it in tape. That works, but I don't like it; too much current passing through that connection.

Here is a crappy pic that roughly shows the piece I used. The 4ga tap you see in the left end is what I would have hooked my starter up to, and the main 2ga cable would come in on that end of the block in the middle. On the right side would be the 4 8ga taps I used for the cars wiring that normally goes to the battery's positive terminal as I described above.



I forgot to mention the ground before. It might be self explainatory, but we might as well get it in for the search. The battery gets grounded back in the trunk. I found the large threaded boss for the spare tire bolt was beefy enough, just clean up the paint and use an appropriately sized lug on the cable. There are 3 ground wires in the engine bay. One is from the manifold to the fire wall to protect the throttle cable. The other two went to the battery. One from the firewall, and one from a starter bolt. The one from the firewall can be deleted. Instead run a large ground cable from the starter bolt (since the starter by far consumes more current than anything else in the car) to a beefy bolt hole on the firewall or fender. I used a shock tower bolt, one of the 3 that hold the front shock in. Its a M10 stud, and the shock tower has a lot of steel in it and is part of the main unibody. I used 4ga cable (like stock), since it's such a short run, but 2ga would technically be more appropriate if you have enough left over. I mounted the distibution block on the side of the shock tower, where the side of the battery would have been in its stock location. My site might have some pictures that show some of this. Yup, some pics here. http://www.posracing.net/bigmaf.html Looks like instead of using a shock tower bolt I used the stud right next to it that the battery hold down used. Also some pics here of the trunk end, and you can see the external cutoff switch in the last pic that is required by NHRA and IHRA for trunk mounted batterys. http://www.posracing.net/KevinsPics.html

The cutoff switch is another topic worth discussing if anyone plans to race with this type of setup. The best option in my humble but experience opinion is the flaming river push-off type switch. There is an extra set of normally openand normall closed contacts. Just killing the battery cable will NOT shut off themotor. I ran the fuel pump rewire through the NC contacts, so when the swithc is pushed the pump shuts down and the motor dies in 2-3 seconds. The usual method is to ass around with large relays and shit to cut off the feed from the alternator, way to risky in myopinion, and the kits are expensive and really suck, leaving you to source all your own parts as usual. It would be safer to put the relay on the coilpack ground or something, but since the battery and fuel pump are both in the trunk, it seemed more logical to kill the pump.

[Blackcrow64]

Ahhh very nice! That is exactly what I was looking for so I can keep a nice clean and safe connection from the battery to the engine. Thanks!