BATTERY COMPARTMENT
This is going to be a long post, LOOK AT THE PHOTOS FIRST, THEN READ THIS AFTER TO KEEP YOUR INTEREST ETC.
This is the engine battery compartment I fabricated. I do not use 8D batteries, only 2 I think they are 30D batteries, not sure? Anyhow this is what I use and it works just fine when the weather is above 50 deg. With the little traveling I feel I will be able to afford to travel now, (freaking Economy) it will be mostly we travel in spring or summer months. I am amazed at the quickness that this 8V71 starts up, quicker than my 1982 Toyota station wagon.
Anyhow, back to this task. I fully inspect the present battery compartment as is and after days of thinking in my mind, I come up with another plan of doing both the generator compt. And battery compt to reinforce the framing of these areas at the same time. I am trying to keep them separate in this post but some photos of the generator compt. Will be visible at times.
As seen in my inspection of the battery compartment I found also that the batteries were not secured in any way and the battery cable runs were horrible. So I removed the batteries and started carving with my trusty grinder and many, many cutting wheels to cut out the entire old framing of both the generator and battery compartment. This was a lot of work, planning and just accepting that my bus IS THE POSTER CHILD FOR THE WORST BUS IN THE WORLD I believe. I inspected this area with (rose colored glasses) as I just got burned AGAIN!
When I first got this bus and found the battery compartment was open to the exhaust of my generator, I fabricated and installed a barrier wall to be there until I got to this area to redesign and fabricate. My battery compartment area was just about totally consumed with rust cancer as the rest of my bus was. Over the past 20 years though it has just sat there, out of the weather and continued to burn from the inside out and this is what I have left to work with and sometimes that was not much.
View photos of my B4 replacement of the battery compartment decking for yourself. NOTE: not all this rust was visible at purchase, a lot of it started then but much of it continued to grow quickly just sitting on blocks in my busport over the years of non use. AGAIN, once rust starts and is neglected, it will continue to burn from the inside out and then you have a mess like I DID. That again is the reason for the name of my bus, (Rustless Money Pit) and now I believe you can see how I arrived at this name.
To rebuild the battery’s curved compartment of the bus I had to use my cut and weld method of bending the tubing to the curve of the bus. After all this was going to be the back bumper of my bus from here on out and the Eagle Back bumper will not be used again. Look at the photos to see how this area was shaped, welded and installed and watch the assembly of the battery compartment.
Looking at the assembly of this compartment, you will see I allowed for ventilation of the battery compt through the bulkhead of this compt. You will also see I had to plan for the exhaust muffler of my generator and the installation of my battery cut off switch so things are now getting tight. I wanted to use the old Eagle cut off switch as it looks heavy duty and just part of the original Eagle design I liked to keep active in my new arrangement for the battery compt. The top of the battery compartment is removable so that maintenance of the batteries can be done easily, and this made this compartment finally very secure in protection of the batteries from dropped tools etc.
I had to fabricate 2 new upper and lower brake light doors for the rear right hand side of the bus and I formed these doors in a crude but effective way and you can see the end result with just primer from a shake and rattle can on them. All this will be rough-sanded for official primer coating in the future when funds are accumulated. Cutout for the tail light assemblies and fabricating areas for the reflectors (no longer used because of new led lights installed) had to be done and again this was a pain in the ass but it got done.
All framing and fabricating was done and coated with rustbullet and then painted with rustoleum dark gray paint. When you actually reach this point you have no idea how great it is to just sit there and admire all you completed over all this time and now the bus is just nearly all done with rust removal and reframing and I am getting so anxious to reach the end of this part of my conversion journey after all I experienced physically myself and physical parts of my bus.
I made one very serious error in the connection of my batteries originally, I used older smaller diameter wire for the negative connections of my batteries. When I went to start up the batteries for the first time since all this work was done, within moments there was smoke and my anxiety went from 0-100 miles per second. I shut off the emergency cut off switch and seen I melted the coating off the negative battery and a fire was probably moments away. Man did I ever lean a lesson there. So, I got information from Kyle Brandt on what to do here and he advise me to get much larger cable, (00) and heavy duty crimp on clamps and I installed both new positive and negative same size wire and crimp them in place with my new crimping tool I got off ebay again at the suggestion of Kyle. Now I have another new Professional tool I love. Take a look at what was left of this negative cable I tried to use at first to save money. I sure learned a lot and hope I am giving you food for thought about all the mistakes I made and corrected and told you about. Everything I had done I put on my sleeve for you to read and soak in, again my job is done. Now onto viewing the photos of the battery compartment fabrication. Enjoy.