[crakarjax]

Originally Posted by 1971_c10

Hehe ... it's been a long time coming! Most guys start on a build then work as budget allows, taking many years to finish. I started on the budget and waited on the build and trying to do this thing in under 2 years.




Oh man, this is one of my "open item" yet to really define. I will probably get the truck running with the battery sitting in the stock location. However, I really desire to get it somewhere in the back on the passenger side. With a stepside bed, the common spot just behind the cab is out, and things are really tight back there otherwise. It's going to be a "decide as I go" once I get the bed on and start on the floor structure. I'm eyeballing right on top of the passenger rail between the bed mounts. The battery would most likely need to lay on its sie but that's not a problem for Optima batteries (which is what I run). The biggest question is how much space I wind up with once I get the floor installed. When I mocked up the raised floor on the factory frame I had about 10.5" to the bottom of the wood, so once I get a subfloor in it's probably like 9.5" (The No Limit chassis isn't any different height wise, in fact I may gain a little more front to back room as they don't kick up the rail as early as the factory chassis). The trick is what I decide to do with the cross members. That's where I may make a custom cross member with an integrated battery box. Who knows...

I've also toyed around with putting it in the cab behind the seat if there is enough room (I plan to mock this up in the coming weeks). No matter where I put the battery, I'll have a large junction over on the driver front side where I'll tie the alternator in and then also the relays for the fans and the power for the fuse box. So I'll at least have a monster cable running over there. I'll then obviously have a monster cable running from the battery to the starter. That's still all up for debate at the moment and one of the reasons I haven't patched the 2 feed through holes in the floor from the old gas tank. I'll still ground everything to the chassis.

Cable routing I'll just use some well insulated cable (pricey stuff) and some of the standard insulated cable hangers you get at the big box stores (that stuff works well). The battery cable would most likely run along the passenger rail with one of the fuel lines. Sounds crazy, but look at a newer car and where they run the battery lines and not much different, other than some of those battery cables are scary huge. So stay tuned on that one!

According to this guy,

I like to set up a car so that it has equal left weight front and rear; that is, the portion of the left side weight on the front wheels is the same as the portion on the rear wheels, by percentage. If the car has 52% front left weight, then it should have 52% rear left weight. Why? So there's no diagonal bias and no static twisting moment. It seems to keep the car more predictable.

Due to this I'm thinking I want to move my battery to the driver side rear... probably right behind the tire. I'm not sure if the same considerations are important for pro-touring, have you looked into this yet?