How to Relocate your battery: Courtesy of plokivos

***ALL POSTS WERE POSTED BY PLOKIVOS ON EVOSE.COM***


Here is a how to on relocating your battery to the right side of your trunk.

This is a relatively easy process if you have someone helping you, you have all the tools and if you have the right relocation box. But you could do this by yourself no problem. I did it by myself.

Now, I had some problems with tighting the bolts that hold the battery and actually trying to fit this summit battery relocation kit into the right side of the trunk. They have hard time fitting on the right side, but left side isn't a problem.

You might consider purchasing a box that's slightly shorter than what I got.

http://store.summitracing.com/defau...=0&autoview=sku

this is what I got.

It's cheap and easy to install, with a lot of pros and lot of cons.

The benefit of battery relocation are these.

1. reduction of weight up front

2. redistribution of the weight to the rear (battery is very very heavy. Very.)

3. 1 + 2 = better balance on turns and overall driving by cutting the weight distribution from 60 front/40 rear to... well about 55 front /45 rear (w/spare tire).

4. You are now using the weight of the battery to make your car better. Instead of using a mini-battery that may or may not work during the winter and may not give you the freedom to turn your radio on without the car on.

5. You don't have to buy an expensive mini battery and the tray.

6. It opens up the engine bay, by a lot. Which is good because it distributes the engine heat down underneath the car more as well as give you more space to work on your car.

Also you could use a custom upper IC pipe, since you have a lot of space without the battery.

I'll get back to the engine heat thing later.


Cons

1. Yes, the length of the battery cable does have irratic reading, since longer the battery cable, the longer it takes for it to deliever the power consistantly.

However, there are no problems as far as driving issues or turning power on, leaving the radio on for a while without the car turned on.

2. If you still have carpet in the trunk, you might need to cut some.

3. you lose a little space on the back.

Really, none of the cons can over turn the pros of relocating the stock battery to the rear.


With this being said, I will begin the relocation instructions with some pix.

***ALL POSTS WERE POSTED BY PLOKIVOS ON EVOSE.COM***


You need these tools:

screw driver- flat and phillips
needle nose plier
wrench set-metric sockets
scissor
some battery grease
drill with drill bits
wd40
wire cutter
lots of zip ties
o bolts - (to stabilize the battery cable in the trunk)

The Battery relocation kit, which comes with:
case straps, an H-bar battery hold-down, J-bolts, 20 ft. of positive and 3 ft. of negative cable (both 2-gauge), cable straps, connectors, grommets, and mounting hardware.
(link to picture of included item from battery box)
https://i.servimg.com/u/f20/11/39/57/59/battbo10.jpg

***ALL POSTS WERE POSTED BY PLOKIVOS ON EVOSE.COM***


Before you get into this, make sure you want to do this. If you have doubts, don't do it. If you are not mechanically inclined, have someone who knows how to do this do it for you.

You have EVO GA///SE members that could help you do this, like me.

And of course, whatever you do to your car is your responsibility, not of www.Evolutionse.com or any other peoples responsibility.

Here is the instruction from Summit Racing.
http://store.summitracing.com/instr...%2Dg1200a%2Epdf

If you get the instruction, you'll know the reason why I'm doing this. They're horrible instructions.

Instruction:

1. Disconnect the positive and negative terminal. There is a 10mm (?) bolt that's on the each side. Turn it counter clock wise, loosen it (wiggle it a bit) then it'll come out.

Make sure you save all your Stand alone maps, safc map, and save anything that might reset. And Yes, you need to reset your radio stations. lol

2. Take your battery out. There are few bolts you need to get out from the battery tray. I believe it's 12mm, but I can't recall.

3. place the battery on top of something, like a plastic tray or cardboard box. This is to prevent your battery from draining out from the concrete ground.

4. fit the battery box into the trunk. Left or right, it's up to you. Ideal location would be right, but you could do it either way.

here is the picture. You need to mark where you're going to drill and drill it.
I did it with the box in place. This is after I've measured out where the battery is going to be.

This hole is for the 2 hooked tie down that attaches to the "H" tied down.


https://i.servimg.com/u/f20/11/39/57/59/evo-ga10.jpg


5. Before you put the box in, you need to drill a hole for the box strap. I've skipped this step, since the ridges on the right side trunk seem to be getting in the way of the strap mount.

I strapped the battery box without the mount and it seem to hold the top of the box in place pretty good.


6. place the box in.


https://i.servimg.com/u/f20/11/39/57/59/evo-ga11.jpg


7. Stick your "H" tie down onto your battery. Using the 2 supplied hook downs, you need to drill a hole for this.

The picture below is what the bottom of the trunk looks like. This is right of the exhaust/muffler. You need to tie those rods with nylon lock tite bolts.

You could either cut the rods down after the bolts go in to tightened it all the way or get a really deep socket. I cut mine with a dremel. (lift is recommended)

The drilling hole on the trunk is very easy. Just have to put your weight on it, and you'll go through it.


https://i.servimg.com/u/f20/11/39/57/59/evo-ga12.jpg

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8. Ok, you're battery is secured. It's tight, make sure it's tight, since it'll be moving around a lot.


https://i.servimg.com/u/f20/11/39/57/59/evo-ga13.jpg


9. Notice on the picture above, you'll see that I placed the battery toward the side of the car. This allowed me to fit the cables in without it having wiggle around too much.

Also it's easier to place the negative ground terminal onto the existing gold factory bolt on the side of the trunk. (Marked "grounding bolt")

10. Cut the negative battery to fit the size for the grounding connection on the mentioned gold factory bolt on the side of the trunk. You could always make your own ground. Make sure you sand down the paint so you could get a good ground connection with the metal.

11. After you're done with connecting the ground, measure how long you need the red positive cable by starting to place it on the install route.

The install route are through the left seat, left rear door sill, left front door sill, then to the firewall. Zip ties were used extensively.

You will also need to take the black plastic piece that's located on the bottom of the B pillar. It just snaps out. Be gentle.

You could bypass putting a hole in the firewall by routing the wire through a little hole above the clutch on the side wall. You will see all the wires going up. This is little more difficult since you need to route the wires to the right hole inside the fender well to the engine bay. (Might need to remove the fender for this).

Here is the route.

Back of the trunk toward the left rear seat.

*{PICTURE WAS MISSING FROM SITE}*

Left rear seat.

*{PICTURE WAS MISSING FROM SITE}*

left rear door sill. You could pop these out gently. They come out fairely easy. Start from the inside to out.

*{PICTURE WAS MISSING FROM SITE}*

Front left door sill

*{PICTURE WAS MISSING FROM SITE}*

***ALL POSTS WERE POSTED BY PLOKIVOS ON EVOSE.COM***


12. I drilled a careful hole (the size comes with the instruction. Rubber gromet will be nice if you make the hole little bigger, but mine was perfect.)

Carefully pull the cable wire through the firewall. Make sure the wire isn't in the way of your pedals. I went up and over above the pedals.

I also had the MBC already drilled in, so I didn't have to poke around to guess where it's open. Make sure you don't drill into anything else.


https://i.servimg.com/u/f20/11/39/57/59/evo-ga14.jpg


here is another picture of it coming out of the firewall.


https://i.servimg.com/u/f20/11/39/57/59/evo-ga15.jpg


12. Now you need to measure how much cable you need, cut it and attached the supplied connectors to the end of the positive cable.

13. you need to connect the cable, tightend it with a plier, make sure the wires secured with the cable, you could use shrink wrap, i used some electric tape over and over again.

14. I connected the red positive cable to the existing cables (the black thing in the middle of the picture), and secured the whole thing with electric tape.


https://i.servimg.com/u/f20/11/39/57/59/evo-ga16.jpg


Then I got tired and hungry, so I did a little loopy loop thing and somehow secured it. I did this because I was tired and hungry, but also I did it so I wont interfere with the transmission or any other parts that down there, like the shift cable.

15. make sure your wire is secured. I used the rubber part of the strut bar to mount mine.


https://i.servimg.com/u/f20/11/39/57/59/evo-ga17.jpg


yes, it's sorta ugly, but I will go back and relocate them all together so it'll be nice and hidden.

I didn't feel the need to do anything with the existing factory negative terminal, since It was already grounded to the car.

LOOK AT ALL THAT SPACE!

Now at this point the positive terminal isn't connected to the battery yet.


https://i.servimg.com/u/f20/11/39/57/59/evo-ga18.jpg

***ALL POSTS WERE POSTED BY PLOKIVOS ON EVOSE.COM***


16. Go back to the trunk, connect the red positive cable to the terminal, make sure your wrench doesn't touch the negative terminal simutaneously and secure them nicely. Make sure the wires are heading toward the designated exit holes on the box.

17. Secure the rest of the wires with some 0 hook. This looks like a 0 that cable goes into that has a screw attached to the end.

18. if you have carpet, put the carpet back on, use the scissor to cut whatever you have to. You could figure this part out.

19. Turn the car on, the electrics first, make sure everything is ok. Then turn the car on. If you have a voltage reader, it'll read from 13.25 to 14.7 up and down.

20. Turn the car off if it's working. If it's not working... well, I don't think it shouldn't work, but check the fuses and make sure you connected the positive cable to positive, negative to negative. If you reverse it, you'll blow a fuse.

21. Now, put the box top back on the battery box, shake it a bit to make sure it's not going anywhere, tightened the battery top strap and go for a test drive.

When you're driving at cruise speed the voltage should remain 14.2 ~14.7.

It'll dip down to 13.7 or so for a bit, but that's ok, as long as it's not always down there.

as the voltage remain above 10 and below 16, you're ok.

Here is the finished result. you're may vary depending on where you put the wires. You could do it much more clean, if you cut the wires a bit shorter, which I will shortly do.

After

https://i.servimg.com/u/f20/11/39/57/59/evo-ga19.jpg


Before

https://i.servimg.com/u/f20/11/39/57/59/evo-ga20.jpg


Hopefully this was worth doing. It only cost me $50 and it's given me a lot more room in the engine bay and it seems to cool the engine bay a bit better.

The bottom of the transmission and front of the transmission, there are few spaces that the air could go up from the front under tray.

This I believe helps cool the engine bay more substantially. the design is that undertray smoothes the air through, thus the air grabbing the car down, and the hood scoop funnels the air that's coming in from the bottom to give you more down force.

If you drag race a lot more and don't do much of the road racing, solo ii or other form of racing, you could take the bottom undertray out and get more air into the engine bay that way.