Battery Tray Under a Tenner

It never ceases to frustrate me how much some very simple parts are for the car. The battery tray is one of these items as AK will happily charge you £40 for a tray, which is nothing more than a bit of welded angle iron which is painted black.

So I decided I wasn't going to go down this route and instead asked around my friends and luckily someone came up with some spare angle iron.

Basically the tray can fit any battery you wish to put in it as you just need to cut the iron into lengths that suit your battery size.

Then, place the lengths into a square (ideally using a set square to get the corners right) and check your battery fits. If so, use Sikaflex to glue the square together holding in place with G-clamps or similar.

Once set, wire brush down if its old angle iron and treat with POR-15. I used some left over caliper paint that I had.

You'll notice that I have trimmed the iron to leave to slots raised up from the rest of the tray so I can feed the battery strap through.

I have also added some foam tape to ensure the battery has a snug fit and no vibration.

Fitting in place was just a case of drilling 4 x 6mm holes in the boot floor. As the angle iron has pre-drilled holes it made the job a little easier.

The strap came from e-bay for a few quid and just needed feeding through and adjusting to the right length.

The last job in the boot now is to fit the battery terminals. The ones I have don't fit the insulated terminal covers so I have had to order some more.