Fitting a Battery Brain or Discarnetcor to a Cerbera?

[Juddder]

Hi everyone

As my Cerbera spends most of it's days in a dark garage, I've been trying to fit a complete cut-off system to the car so that I can leave it for a few weeks and the battery doesn't go flat.

However the space in the engine where the battery fits seems to be so tight that it's IMPOSSIBLE to shoe horn either a Battery Brain (remote cut off thing) or a Discarnector (manual cut off thing) in there as far as I can tell so I've just about given up.

Has anyone else had more success than me or a better way of achieving the same effect?

I noted in the Chimera forum that one of the Tuscan owners had a Battery Brain fitted but maybe there's just more room in the engine bay of the Tuscan!?

[Juddder]

matty1275 said:

i fitted a discarnect to stop flat battery syndrome,
I just gently trimmed the scuttle panel until it fitted over the main bit of the isolator.
the manual turn screw which you used for isolating just sits proud and is dead easy to use.

ended up just touching up the scuttle edge, but it look fine.

never had flat battery probems since!!!

Hi Matty

That sounds great

Any chance of a photo if you get a chance (then at least two more of us should be able to make our Cerbera owning lives significantly easier!!!)?

BTW thanks for the post and great pic of the Purple Cerb - looks fantastic and I'd say there's a mod of two there above the rest of us (cool air filters BTW )

Alex

[Juddder]

Had a reply from Tony the Tuscan owner who fitted a Battery Brain with some handy reference pictures.

Basically he fitted it in the Passenger foot well of the car and guessing that (no idea) the Cerbera would be similarly possible if the battery lead comes through from the battery in the engine??

Here's the pictures for reference:

[Juddder]

Hi Julian

Agreed - however if you fancy some rather expensive practising in the mean time....

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TVR-CERBERA-FIBREGLASS-S...

[Juddder]

scotty_d said:

I have one of these on top of my negative pole. I had to spin the battery round in it's tray and re-route the leads to the negative it to the inside of the car now. At less than 5 quid it works fine.

If you need pictures i can get you some tomorrow when my wish bones dry as there hanging off the ramp, so cant lower the car jut now.

Hi Scotty - pictures would be awesome so yes if you get a chance tomorrow that would be great!

[Juddder]

gerradiuk said:

Mmm they leak enough as it is , I would be dubious about putting more holes in the bulkhead especially very near where the main ECU live's ?

I'm wondering whether the Battery Brain can be squeezed underneath the radiator reservoir as per these shots. That way it stays in the engine compartment, the re-routing of the positive to the Battery Brain is fairly easy, and an extra inter-connect lead can just go from the other side of the Battery Brain to the battery positive terminal.

Also, the tray looks flat so the Battery Brain can be bolted to that?

If anyone has stared at this area of the engine bay during a rebuild for more than the 30 seconds I did it would be interesting to get any thoughts!!

Thanks again

[Juddder]

scotty_d said:

Here are the pictures of mine as promised , Also cable routing and the use of spyra rap to protect the cable chaffing on the metal edges. I used some rubber hose as well. Last thing you want is for it to chaff through and be a fire hazard as it shorts out.

Hi Scotty

That's brilliant. The one challenge for me looking at the photos is that your negative terminal on the battery is on the left, and near the front of the car, whereas on the Optima Bluetop thing battery I have the positive is on the left and near the front of the car.

Therefore... I'm guessing I can just shimmy the battery as tightly close to the Radiator Reservoir as possible and should be able to replicate what you are doing?!

Also - the disconnect thing I have has a green top, and the connection plug seemed quite small when I was trying to tighten the battery terminal around it - not sure if these come in two sizes etc.

Thanks again

[Juddder]

Jubes said:

Thanks Scott.

The only thing I'm struggling to do is move the battery 180 degrees without causing the negative terminal to move too far back towards the rear of the car and disappear from view through the scuttle/battery panel terminal access hole. (My battery has the terminals on the opposite corners to yours unfortunately)

Hi Jules

I was looking at mine (and considering the same challenges) and one option that sprung to mind was to mount the discarnect thing on the middle terminal of my battery (it has screw on connectors as well as normal connectors) so that then the 'wheel' would be pretty much bang visible in the window of the scuttle.

The other option (I was trying last night on a spare battery) is that the discarnect _can_ be mounted on the positive terminal and then _should_ be in the same places as Scott's - you/I will just need to be careful when unscrewing it as obviously the positive terminal is LIVE.

That said I have to disconnect the positive terminal first anyway currently to safely slide the battery out and it's not shocked me yet, and seeing at most of the car is fibre glass it _should_ be relatively safe.

I'm investigating the Battery Brain thing over the weekend by removing the battery and digging around so will update from there!

Alex

[Juddder]

Hi Jubes

Spent another few hours on this and still no ideal solution yet unluckily - here's the output so far.

1. Battery-disconnect

Yes this does fit the positive terminal, however the reciprocal end of the Discarnect is the size of the negative battery terminal head, so the lead from the Cerbera won't fit onto it tightly enough.

I looked at adding some padding to achieve this, but couldn't think of a good conductive material that would work.



2. Battery brain

Well the good news here is that it does appear to fit into the space beneath the Radiator overflow tank.

However I think to get a really good job you'd need to remove the overflow tank so that you can drill the holes to mount the unit to the bodywork which requires a garage and time, neither of which I have at the moment.

I'm thinking of asking my local garage to see if they could do this.

Basically you would mount the Battery Brain as per the 1st picture below, connect the existing +ve cable to this, and then run a second +ve cable from the battery brain to the main battery +ve terminal.





3. Fails

I tried a few methods to fit the Battery Brain to the side of the battery but as you can see it just ain't gonna' work :-)



Any suggestions from the other Cerbera owners much welcome!!!!

Alex

[Juddder]

I like it! :-)

Seems to be a very sensible solution and I'll give that a go too I think.

For the self tapping screws, did you unbolt the panel and screw them in from the back, or just from the top down?