This covers how to get a trunk mounted battery in a 1G DSM (Eagle Talon Tsi AWD). Most of the procedure should be similar for other cars. Relocating the battery to the trunk is a simple mod that will improve handling by shifting some weight from the front to the back of the car so it's more balanced. Or so they say :p ... I'm sure it helps, but honestly I didn't really notice any difference in how the car handles. The 2 real benefits I got from it are:
- I can use a simple straight pipe for the upper IC pipe instead of routing it around the battery and cruise control unit.
- Having the battery in the trunk made rewiring the fuel pump a piece of cake.
Here's the list of stuff you'll need for this mod:
- Sealed battery, like an Optima
- Lots of 2 ga wire (enough to get from the back to the front of the car) plus connectors/terminals
- Circuit breaker or fuse box
- Soldering iron and some solder
- Drill
- Battery box and tie downs (both available at Pep Boys)
... or if you're lazy like me, just buy one of the Battery Relocation kits from Summit Racing. Good thing about this kit is it comes with more than enough 2 ga wire plus all the connectors and terminals, tie downs, strap, and battery box. Bad thing is the tie downs suck. I'm not sure if other tie downs are like this, but once you have it installed you have to get under the car to remove it. I'm not sure if you really need a box either. I just installed it since the kit came with it. I guess some racing sanctioning bodies might require you to have a box (actually I'm not even sure if this box is legal in the first place), but I was able to pass tech for Solo2 events with the box open.
Then I soldered a connector onto the positive cable. I have no idea how you're supposed to do this so I just stripped the tip of the cable and stuffed it in the connector. Then I drilled a small hole in the connector and cable, filled it up with solder, and covered it up with electrical tape. Worked pretty well :) Just make sure that the hole you drill doesn't go through both sides of the connector, otherwise all the solder you drip in one side of the hole will just fall out the other.
Next, I connected the new cable to the other wires/cables/fuses that were originally connected to the positive terminal. I forgot to buy nuts and bolts to connect the cables, so I just used the bolt on the stock positive terminal to connect the new positive cable and taped it all together:
Now you need to decide what you want to do with the cruise control unit if you want a nice straight upper IC pipe. You know you want one! I guess you can find some way to mount the cruise control unit so it's not in the way (on the firewall or wherever) ......
.... or be a man and trash it ;)
If you decided to trash the cruise control, you'll need a non-cruise control accelerator cable. You can probably get it for real cheap from a junk yard. I ended up paying $70 or so for a new one from the dealers because I couldn't wait. =\ Note how it goes the opposite direction of the original cable:
Here's what the new positive cable looks like inside the car if you look at it from the passenger side:
Supposedly you should route the positive cable to the trunk under the carpet, but I'm about to install some new seats so I'll get back to that when I take the passenger seat out. I just put the carpet under the glove compartment area back for now:
Next, mount the battery in the trunk with the tie downs and ground the negative terminal. I grounded it to the hole where the spare tire was:
Be sure to splice a circuit breaker or fuse box in the positive cable near the battery. I used a circuit breaker and tied it down with zip ties:
Update Nov 2003:
I finally got back to routing the positive cable under the carpet when I installed the Sparco Sprint seats:
