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In light of recent events (fire in Canada) and known heat issues with turbo kits my friend and I decided to do away with everything next to the exhaust: battery, fuse box, eps, and the winsheild washer fluid tank. This is also because i'm going turbo and trying to solve problems before the happen. It only took us 5 or 6 hours when you add them up, most of which was figuring out how to do it. So for you it would take less time if you go the route we did. Here we go:
I picked up an oddessey battery and relocated it to where the spare used to be. We then ran the power wire along the door sill.
That was the easy part. Now for the hard part:
Remove the passenger tire, wheel well, and fender.
Then we removed the fluid tank.
We then unplugged everything the harness was connected to; fuse box, eps box, eps, the fans, ac, horn, headlights and the abs clip.
Believe it or not the entire harness does fit threw the hole that the fluid tank used to go in.
We put the wheel well back in to see what we were working with. Then laid out the harness over the wheel well and started to extend wires. We soldered and heat shrank every connection. The tough ones are the eps wires only cause its 8 gauge wire. Make sure you have a serious soldering iron or a butane kit. We ran the eps wires in a seperate loom and tied it up underneath the AC line on the cross member. We were just going for a clean look.
As for the eps box itself we took out the support braket that used to be under the battery and low and behold the two side holes of the eps box line up with two of the existing holes. Threw a bolt and nut threw each hole and called it good. Its hard to see but the clips are facing out and its right in the empty slot.
As for the fuse box we decided to re-use the same system the fluid tank used to use. We cut off the locking tab and rivited it to a bracket that is going to hold the fuse box.
heres the bracket
We attached the bracket to the fuse box with rivits but inorder to do that your going to need to pop the fuse plate out of the box. it will look like this:
This is what the bracket looks like before the fuse box is attached; the test fit:
And with the box:
I'm sure youre thinking; what are you going to do when you blow a fuse. Well the beauty of using the old mount for the tank is that i'll be able to crank the wheel over, remove a couple of the clips and pull the fuse box out. I believe that five minutes is worth not having to worry about heat issues.
From here its just a matter of buttoning things up:
Now you get this:
This is our response to heat shields and melted wires. Let us know what you think.
Very nice work... that is pretty creative to think of that. The only potential problem that I see is if you have to change a fuse then it will be a PITA to have to take your fender off. Maybe I should relocate my battery to the trunk also... hmm.
That looks very nice, but that would really be trouble-some to diagnose a blown fuse. BTW, I thought the general concensus with most of us non-professionals was that the fire could have started from the fuse box itself due to faulty wiring.
In all honesty, with my simple - 10 minutes to make - heat shield, I can touch the battery and it is perfectly cool. However I think that's more because of my hood and how I routed the heat shield to be right at the 3rd vent.
Now where's your fluid? I had originally wanted to relocate everything to the trunk but then decided that I am wayyyyy too lazy. My battery is in my trunk and have built a heatshield instead.
i have till next august until the car gets inspected again. So by then i'm going to fab up a small box to hold some windshield washer fluid and just re-use the pump. I've had my car for over a year now and i've maybe used 1/4 of the fluid...aka it's not high on my priorities right now.
And as far as the AC goes, i'm getting a v-mount which means i have to get rid of the filter in the front bumper. And in light of that it's looking like i'm just going to take out the AC until I have the kit in and then i'll figure out that.
I have same battery. I'm in the process of moving the battery to the trunk. I'm going to move the fuse box just to the other side of the firewall though. I have no Air conditioning, so I have even less to potentially melt
11-04-2006, 03:59 PM
Solution to heat issues
The only potential problem that I see is if you have to change a fuse then it will be a PITA to have to take your fender off. Maybe I should relocate my battery to the trunk also... hmm.
