Tuesday, March 3, 2009

My God, Man! What have you done?!

BMW lovers, you may want to look away for a moment. You've been warned.


I prepared the trunk for some serious brutality this morning. Measured out the space where the battery box will go, got out an angle grinder with my best diamond bit and went at it.




It went surprisingly well. Lots of sparks, a little smoke and no blood. Sounds like a near perfect date. I'm considering using carbon fiber to make the battery box that will fit in that hole. Of course it's lighter than steel but also many times more expensive. But how cool would that be?!



Here you can see a mock up of how the batteries will fit in the space. Each of the boxes is slightly bigger than one of the batteries I intend to use. See, I've conveniently drawn battery terminals on one of the boxes to show it's supposed to be a battery. Isn't that clever? No... it really isn't is it. Lets move on.

Once I build the box to hold them and mount it in place, the tops of the batteries will be just below the surface of the trunk's floor, and yet several inches above the bottom of the bumper and the rest of the under-carriage from underneath.

3 comments:

Gam0ra said...

Is the ground clearance going to be about the same amount it had before? Are you planning to reinforce the bottom so that if the backend hits the ground the batteries are protected?

Tim Catellier said...

The ground clearance will be the same as it was. The original battery was on one side of that cavity, so now there will be 4 instead. Now however, it will be a uniform height across the back. The only way it could bottom out was if I went 4 wheeling, or drove off a 12 inch curb.

Gam0ra said...

Wait...so you're saying you're NOT going 4 Wheeling and curb hopping? I must have misunderstood the point of this car.