A good battery tie down

RatLabGuy

RatLabGuy

You look like a monkey and smell like one too
Joined
May 18, 2005
Location
Churchville, MD
... is a good idea.

I swapped my AFM and battery years ago. so I had to come up w/ a new battery mount plate etc. For awhile now, my "holder" has been a strap going around the battery holding it to the plate (bright rainbow colored, thanks to Caver Dave). Not too long ago when I started using the truck for racing too) I added a $5 Autozone cheapie plastic hold-down, the classic type that goes across the top w/ a j-bolt on either side.
Always meant to upgrade but never got around to it. This combo always work just fine.

Well, during the Line Mountain "coal Bucket" race, I rolled the truck onto the passenger side. We got pushed back over, and kept on going. No big deal.
What I didn't know at the time was... aparently during the flop (or sometime before that) the plastic holder had come off//broken.. and the tie-down strap got a bit loose...
Well this allowed the battery to fall onto the power steering pulley... which proceeded to both chew ahole into it, and throw it around.
See the attached pics. Lucky, this is an Orbital dry cell - no mess... but you can see one of the cells is totally destroyed.

I also have several small upward-facing dents unmy hood, where it was tryin gto jump out. Yikes. Thank God I had a good rubber boot over the positive terminal.

so needless to say - I'm getting a real, stout battery holder now.
 

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haha. ive had this happen before. it was actually the first time i took my first truck out wheeling. it was just on some land that a buddy had and we had a dirt track and mud pit and some hills to climb. well i still had the 14 inch stock rims and street tires on it so it wasnt very impressive. ended up giving it 2 much gas around a turn in 4 wheel drive and run off a hill before i cud do anything. had a regular interstate battery and a rubber bungee cord holding it down (didint thing nothing of it) well it broke and my battery slung around and had holes in the bottom where the a/c pump rubbed on it. funny thing is i was supposed 2 take a girl out that night so i went 2 the car wash and spent a crap load of quarters. and the battery didnt give me any issues for the rest of the day. i still changed it and put a ratchet strap on it :bounce2:
 
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I scabbed this together one evening after the battery in my ole GMC slid off it's mount. the actual hold downs were long since rusted off.

I made a base from some sheet stock I had, used a cut off wheel to kerf the sheet so I could bend sides to tack to what was left of the existing battery tray mounts. some scrap light box tube tacked to the bottom.

The top bar has angle welded to the bottom just wide enough to let the battery fit, but not allow movement. The bolts were some extra J bolts I had laying around, I cut and welded them to make long enough to be useable.

Yes, the top of the battery says " SECOND", bought from EXIDE as an unsold store return, $30 800cca
 
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