Just wanted to share some quick pictures of my battery relocation which was inspired by many posts in these forums. Since I had an Optima dry cell battery I decided to go without the Battery box for now but there is plenty of room under the strut bar to fit one in later. I was carefull to insulate all possible contact points which ended up covering some of the shiny connectors but it's much safer. I used a 200 amp circuit breaker since it makes working on the car easier without removing the negative terminal.

I ended up using a metal battery tray from Pep Boys and anchored it down with 4 large sheet metal screws. I re-bent the original J-Hooks and also used the original battery hold down. Grabbing the tray or the battery with all my strength showed that it was literally part of the car now and very solid. I ran about 14' of 4 gauge positive wire along the driver's side to the kick panel then followed the wiring harness to the fuse box by cutting a slit in the stock firewall grommet. Underhood I was able to remove the original battery tray and ended up using zip ties in strategic locations to anchor the positive battery connection under the hood. I used one of the rear seat anchors for the battery ground in the rear after scraping away the bare metal under the connector.

Overall it was really easy but time consuming as I didn't want to screw up the cutting of the floor board or carpet in the rear. Just getting some of the ring connectors crimped on the cables was a major task when you don't have a crimper and the cable won't reach the garage floor for a quick beating with a hammer. I did try to find 2 gauge wire but I found that as long as you aren't running a huge stereo that 4 gauge has worked just fine in my Eclipse over the last 6 years. The car seems to handle just a touch better than before, now for the next round of upgrades... Gauges, AFC2, MAF pipe with Airfilter, Custom Cold air box, Upper Intercooler pipe, Rear Anti-roll bar, and Full 3" exhaust. Buschur Racing almost makes it too easy sometimes.

 

Looks good. Never hurts to lighten the front end on our cars.

 

didnt drill into your fuel tank did ya?

 

OT, but who makes that strut tower brace in the back?

 

Looks good!

Another OT question.... what kind od speaker box is that?

 

I pre-drilled all the holes so that the sheet metal screws could tap properly. I did this carefully and only one screw that was tapped towards the front of the car had more metal about 1/4" right below the ripple. The best that I could tell is that the fuel tank doesn't go higher than the rear seats or opening the tank would flood the passenger compartment with fuel, so I'm quite sure it was just more metal bracing. I also checked for a hollow echo sound before drilling through the second layer and it seemed good.

Another thing I forgot to mention is when you remove the spare tire for weight considerations, the trunk floor will sag down and look like crapola. I found some lightweight plastic foam that was kicking around at work which was used in a computer monitor box. Just a couple peices of that stuff were the perfect height and could support almost 200 lbs before showing any sign of compression. I tried a couple peices of styrofoam and because I had to cut it down to the right height I had all those white static pieces sticking to everything, find some plastic foam the first time! The spare tire well is also a nice place to hide your amps or mount a water injection reservoir.

The rear strut bar is from Buschur racing and comes as a brushed aluminum piece that is very rigid. I spent about 10 min shining it up with 1000 grit then 2000 grit sand paper, then finished it off with a quick polish and it's as shiny as it needs to be in the trunk. Since I have the "Sun and Sound" package I had to angle the stock 8" sub outwards towards the drivers side in order to avoid sending the strut bar through the speaker... the stock sub isn't exactly great but it's extremly lightweight so I'm just going to leave it in all the time even while racing. The Evo 8 is quite stiff from the factory but I did notice a difference in turn in after moving the battery and installing the strut bar. The next big change handling wise will be the rear anti-roll bar.

 

looks good

 

looks good u need to have an external kill switch with it in the trunk correct? and a box for the bat? dont remember all the rules

 

looks like you are not planning to use depth of the trunk space

 

The depth of the trunk space is already partially blocked by the strut bar and I would rather have the full width of the trunk farthest to the rear where you can reach stuff you throw in there. I guess I don't plan on placing large peices of luggage in the Evo but the loss of about 12" up by the rear seats was the hardest space to use without throwing your back out. The first priority for me was to make room for power mods under the hood without resorting to a mini battery since I live in a colder climate. I was considering the passenger rear corner as an alternate location but that wouldn't be as good for car balance as having right over the rear wheels in the center.

Battery box can be thrown in at any time if it turns out I really need it, but with a dry cell battery that has all the positive connectors covered it really seems like overkill. You could run a battery vent to the spare tire well without any major problems but those rules are really there for the stock wet battery with acid sloshing around, I would definitely use a full box and vent for that dangerous thing!

As far as the kill switch I guess I could retrofit something into the design and put another circuit breaker into positive cable and mount behind the license plate for track use. I'm not really all that excited about placing anything that turns my power off on the outside of the car unless it's a full out race car. Maybe place a kill switch in there for the ground cable, but I wanted to keep cable lengths to the minimum which ended up being 14' for the positive and 2' for the ground. It seems like 95% of the battery relocations I've seen don't have a kill switch mounted on the back of the car. Technically you just need to push the red reset button on my breaker but it's at the back of the trunk and not outside. If your car is in a major accident on the track they can just as easily cut the red positive wire leading to the rear under the stock red battery insulator still under my hood. Maybe mount the breaker switch in the spare tire well and fab up a bracket and rod that reaches the back of the car under the license plate and put a red kill button there. Course you would have to remove the license plate while racing which would work but honestly the car doesn't have the mods to justify that much engineering yet.

What's the official rules if you are at the quarter mile track or road course?

 

looks good, why did you move the battery?

 

I needed to make room for a Buschur Racing Deluxe Upper Intercooler pipe, custom cold air box and other goodies. It also moves weight to the rear of the car which is good since from the factory we are 60% front/40% rear. The optima is a lower weight spiral cell sealed battery and it's also good to keep it outside of the harsh underhood temps of a turbocharged car for longevity. Replacing the stock battery with a mini and leaving it up front is fine but some people have plans for larger stereo's or have to be able to reliably start the car in the dead of winter.

 

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Thats awesome...I've been wanting to do that to mine as well....I may be shootin you some PM's with some troubleshootin if ya dont mind...thnx

 

Really nice job.Why not put it in a scca Battery Box ??