Day 7 now? Wow, time is flying by. Another 2 hours into it so far this week. But enough chit chat, let's get to it.

Put the vent grill up and marked the panel where I wanted to cut.
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Cut along the dotted line (sorry, I didn't dot the line, but it sounded better that way)
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Placed the grill up to the hole to check coverage, looks good to me.
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Once the box is painted, I'll rivet the grill on.

Here's the box, new struts holding the lid open without any help from a spare hammer.
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On the batteries you can see the start of what I'm working on for the hold down brackets. It shows up a bit easier on the red one. Yes I know they are different rated batteries, they are only spares that I got for free, and I'm just using them for mock up purposes right now.

Here's a better pic of my hold down brackets.
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Just holding the top section against the bottom section.

And the bottom section that I was working on this afternoon.
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The plan is to get a liner under the batteries, get the top on to the battery, the bottom where I want it and tack it together right beside the battery. Dangerous? Nah! Just a quick bzzt bzzt. Oh, and round the corners off. And make some plates for under the shelf for me to bolt through so they stay put.

Just wondering if I should make the hold down brackets in such a way that they clamp the batteries, or just hold them. I suppose I could have them clamp to the thickness of a flat washer...

And that was it for today!

 

You have some nice work going there...

 

Day 8, battery hold down brackets finished.

First thing I did was cut a piece of plastic for a box liner to go under the batteries.
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I'll have it out tomorrow for another picture, but I still want to finish up the floor a bit. Got some screw holes I want to fill... You can see two holes there in the "shelf", those are where the hold down brackets are going to bolt through.

You might remember yesterday I was going to tack the brackets together next to the battery. I decided to not do that, and instead use a paint pen.
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I shimmed under the bracket with some washers, marked it, then took it over to the bench and reclamped it with two pairs of needle nose vise grips. Then I tacked them, and welded them up solid.
And here is one of the brackets.
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The upper and lower pieces are going to sandwich the sheet metal on the shelf. I'm probably going to weld the lower piece to the underside, as I already have the nuts welded to it anyway. Just make it easier for re+re if I need to.

I also cut the corners off and smoothed them over, because nothing sucks more than a sharp piece of metal sticking you on the hand when you're only there to check on things. However, from that angle, the nicely finished corners don't show up very well, so I'll have to retake that picture tomorrow. And depending on when that happens, it might already be painted, hehe.

So as it stands, I'm pretty much done. I'm debating the cut out switch placement again, as I realized I can mount it in a different way so that the knob is outside, AND! REMOVABLE! Would definitely make wiring easier that way.

Something else I've been thinking about, is putting my solar charge controller in there too. Would also simplify wiring if I could do that. The only thing I'm worried about with that is the battery fumes killing my charge controller. I'll have to research it a bit, but I need to decide fairly quickly.

Other than those two things, it's down to sanding and paint! We'll see what day 9 brings us tomorrow!

 

Coming along nicely!

 

Day 9. Working on this box 15 minutes at a time sure makes for slow going. But I'm finally at a point now that I can say it is ready for paint.

Here's a pic of the liner I cut for under the batteries.
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And as promised, a different angle of the hold down brackets showing the rounded off corners.
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Okay, on to the stuff I did today. You remember I was toying with the idea of changing the location of the disconnect switch and making it "external"?
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First, I marked the mounting holes. Then I figured out where the center of the rotary switch would be. Boy am I glad the engineer who came up with the design decided to have it perfectly centered...

Center punched and hole sawed.
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The size I intended to use was worn out, not enough to take the paint off and make it look like it was cutting, but just enough to not really cut anything. So I had to use one size smaller and use a die grinder to open it up the rest of the way.

And after taking the burrs off, here's the switch posing for a picture.
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Now for the last thing. The mount for my solar charge controller.
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Look familiar? I made up another angle bracket, a 1/2x1" angle this time. Cut both to length. The longer one I split the ends so I had something to weld with.

Here's the inner piece welded in
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Pre-drilled the mounting hole for the charge controller. I did both at the same time, fully trusting my jiffy marker to end up perfectly lined up.

And the outer piece welded in.
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I sure hope I didn't screw up my measurements, there isn't any time to redo it...

Would ya look at that, it worked!
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Screw holes lined up perfectly, controller sits flat in it's angled bracket. It might not be pretty, but it'll work.

So with that, fabrication is done. Tomorrow I'll vacuum it out, start grinding the rust off, sanding down the powdercoating, and priming it. Hope to have 3 coats of paint on it by the end of the day.

I think that's 4-1/2 hours so far this week, about 5-3/4 hours last week. Not sure if it would have gone quicker if I did it in one shot, since I have to make the most of the 15 minutes I get. I think because of that, I spend most of my working time thinking how to best use my 15 minutes most efficiently. Since I'm not staring at it and figuring, wasting time that way, I'm doing that in my head while doing my job. When I come back to the battery box, I know exactly what needs to be done, and I get right to it.

 

Day 10 was just paint. Cleaned up the rust, primered it and painted it. I'm letting the paint cure over the weekend, and on Monday I'll install the vent grill and the switch.

I vacuumed the inside the best I could, sanded a bit, brake cleaned the old oil and grease inside and out, then used a galvanizing primer on all the bare metal.

Anyway, here we go. Bare metal in primer, scuffed up the rest of it.
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Missed priming the spot weld there, but I assure you I still forgot about it when it came time to spray the black paint.

Basically, I used an 80 grit roloc disc in my angle die grinder to take the bad rust off, and a scotchbrite pad to scuff the rest. Once the primer was dry, I scuffed it all over again, then used compressed air to blow the dust off.

The view of the back. Inside is painted white, the outside is painted black.
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I sprayed white first, so through the holes came the black overspray. I'll have a pic of that on Monday.

And the front.
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Both of these are with one coat of black. In this one it shows I removed the release button. My replacement keys still haven't shown up yet, but soon I hope.

I ended up getting 3 coats on today. I'll have another pic on Monday of how I painted the bottom, but I'll describe it now. Basically I rolled it onto it's back on a piece of clean cardboard, then painted it. The paint was still a little tacky, but it's the backside anyway, nobody will see it. And if I need to, I can touch it up a bit on Monday morning.

So what's left? I have to install the vent grill, the switch and the release button. Also make up some cables from the switch to the battery, cables from the charge controller to the batteries, a longer positive and ground cable, and round up some Pico clamps to keep the wiring nice and clean.

But for now, I'm going to enjoy my weekend, and I suggest you guys do the same. And don't forget to adjust your clocks forward and check your smoke detectors!

 

very nice writeup Joe.... good detail and a very satisfying project I'll bet... thanks john

 

Really looks good Joe

 

This was well-written, good pictures

 

Thanks guys, that really means a lot to me. I really appreciate it!

 

Very nice Joe!
Ken should make an article out of this!

 

Happy Monday! Hope everyone survived the time change. So what day are we on now? Day 11 I think.

Today, I installed the cutoff switch, the vent grill, test fitted the battery hold down brackets, made some cables (because the spare batteries were already in, and it's easier that way), adapted some glad hand rubbers to work as grommets, and just realized I forgot to take some pictures. Just kidding.

Okay, in this one, I've fit the switch into the hole and got it screwed down tight.
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And the switch face is removable.
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The backside, with the cover off, showing the terminals.
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With the contrasting white paint on the inside. Honestly, I just didn't feel like changing the colour of the inside, and I figured any sort of problem would probably show up quicker on a white background.

Here's a shot with the power cable, and the backing off the switch.
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This isn't the order I actually did the work, but it's just for illustration purposes. Shortly after this was taken I "adjusted" the bolt holes for the left side hold down bracket that go through the box. Slightly offset outwards when I originally drilled it...

The actual second thing I did, between the switch and the cables, was the vent grill.
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And in relation to the switch. You can see the imprint that the cardboard left in the paint when I laid it on it's back to paint the bottom. And I did get a pic of that.
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We've got a whole bunch of those yellow step stools at work, they're pretty handy for jobs like this...

Tomorrow I'll have some pics of the "grommets", cables run, charge controller, associated wiring and fuses, etc, with the batteries in. And then I'll pull it all out again, hopefully the weather cooperates and I can install it tomorrow evening.

 

Well doodz, day 12, this is it! Install day!

But first, minor modifications. I decided to weld some nuts on the brackets as something to secure the solar charger cables to.
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I repainted them after the welding was done. I'll probably have a pic of the cable tied to it once I get the solar installed.

Where the charge controller goes. I made up cables that were a bit longer than necessary, just in case I want to change something.
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There's a fuse holder in there too, you can barely make it out.

Grommet on the positive side.
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I suppose I could have bought actual grommets, but I've done it this way for years.

Here we are now at the trailer a-frame.
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I changed out the power and ground cables for red and black, rather than black and white. Not that I'm against black and white, but you'll see the cable ends are crimped and bare. The ones I'm putting in are soldered and heat shrunk.

With the box screwed down, I used one of the self tapping screws to also secure a Pico clamp to hold the extra cable.
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You can see the heat shrink protecting the bare copper strands on the black cable there, not as visible on the red one from this angle.

And the batteries are in, held down tight. The welded on nuts are pretty clear here, you can see how I'd want to run the charge controller wires.
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Extra cable for the ground side there too.

Everything where it belongs.
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The latches for my weight distributing hitch clear the box. I had to make sure they would before I started this project. And that's a good thing.

The finished job.
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Almost looks like it belongs there!

And that brings us to our conclusion. Thanks for following along!

 

Looks like the trailer came from the factory!!!

 

You should quit the job and start building those boxes!