BATTERY INSTALL 2016

The sailing season has been delayed while I deat with the damaged battery SNAFU. Two new 8A4D batteries arrived to replace the two that were damaged in the original shipment. The only difference is that the batteries probably have different manufacturing dates. When I ordered the original batteries the battery company said it could provide batteries manufactured the same day. But, now that probably is not the case. Whether or not it will make that much of a difference only time will tell.
So I loaded up all five hundred and twenty pounds of batteries into the car and took them to the boatyard.

I had BIANKA launched because it would be easier to load the batteries into BIANKA while floating at the dock.
I did make some major changes in the placement of the new batteries. I reversed the location of the the terminals of batteries one to three. I just turned them around so all terminals are located along the port side. Battery four was off by it's self next to the other batteries facing aft on the starboard side. The was because the engine stringer which held up the original battery platform did not extend far enough aft to allow for the fourth battery so I installed it next to the other three. Unfortunately this also meant I had to empty out two cockpit lockers to do any maintenance on the pack instead of one. It was a real pain.
By building a metal extension battery holder out of slotted angle iron and extending it off of the existing platform:

I was able to line up all the battery terminals on the same side and make them easy to reach after only emptying one of the cockpit lockers. This will make for much easier access and maintenance in the future.

 Other than doing the install on the hottest day of the year the install went pretty good. There might be some tweaks I might want to do but, they could wait until the off season. The next step is to get the batteries wired up. I did have some concern that since I changed the layout of the batteries that one or both of the main battery cables would not reach the proper terminals. We'll see how that works out once I start wiring thing up.