Sunday, August 26, 2007

Testing Rear Rack Placement

Some email exchanges with Tim at 914ev revealed a concern with motor placement and mounting the rear racks. Specifically, I have installed my motor with the standard rubber mounting equipment (see this image). Tim said that there is a possibility that this will interfere with the rack installation, so I decided to try it out. First, I dropped the rack in:


It interferes with the suspension console, so it will not go any lower at this point:


More significantly, it interferes with the motor / transmission mounting interface - this means it cannot move any farther back (and, in fact, the rack will rub against the motor if it is this far back). I am unable to make the rack level because of this interference (because I can't move it any farther back - the slope of the rear firewall prevents me from raising the front of the rack without moving it back):


As additional evidence, I used a square to measure the depth of the rack from the highest point of the divider between the trunk and engine compartment - 11 5/16 inches:

Unfortunately, this is *exactly* the height of the box. This means, when the box top is added and the hold-down brackets are attached, the engine compartment cover will not close completely:


So, between the potential for friction / rubbing / etc. and the engine compartment cover not closing, I need to rethink the rubber mounting. I am reluctant to remove them. I'm considering instead dropping the engine mounting bar about an inch with steel or brass spacers. This would require a longer bolt, of course - not a big deal.

2 comments:

TimK said...

Excellent way to measure your rear battery rack. I was looking through your dashboard gauges a few posts ago and it looks like you added the +/- 50amp ammeter to the dash. I would like to warn you that my boating ammeter pegs out above 150amps, so your shunt/ammeter may not be big enough. Mike at ElectroAuto said that he intentionally DIDN'T give me a shunt or ammeter because he didn't know how much the AC kit would pull. (hmmm...)

Ross Cunniff said...

Interesting point on the shunt/ammeter - I've got the ones EA provided to me. We'll see if they are useful or not :-(

Regarding battery racks - I've tentatively removed the rubber mounting thingies, and now I'm running into the suspension console interfering. I gained a whole 1/16 of an inch from this exercise - not enough to worry about. It looks like the natural mounting point of the rear rack is, in fact, just ahead of the transmission/mounting ring point - so my interference there is to be expected (if I move the rack above that point, it is too far back - a square reveals that the rack is about 1.5" under the trunk firewall and will definitely not allow the boxes to fit)