Jim's Boomer Battery Box

[jinman]

Jim\'s Boomer Battery Box

One of the most frustrating problems with the older (pre-ugly lights) Class III Boomers is the position of the battery and leaking battery acid. I call the old Class IIIs " <font color="blue">hole-in-the-roof Boomers </font>" because the hood has that large open screened area right above the battery (yellow arrow). If the battery leaks acid, you rinse off the hood, or it rains, the battery gets wet. As soon as you start the engine, the acid gets sucked off the battery and goes all over the hydrostatic transmission cooler hoses and into the radiator. The new Boomers have eliminated that problem by removing the screen on the hood.

 

[jinman]

Re: Jim\'s Boomer Battery Box

I've attached a photo of my tractor about 3-1/2 years ago (yellow framed inset) which shows what my hydrostatic hoses looked like. I got the hoses and radiator replaced under warranty. As you can see, the rest of the area doesn't look too bad. Because of that I didn't ask for the battery shelf to be replaced.

That was a mistake. It seems that minor seepage and leaking have caused that area to continue to deteriorate. Recently I put enough water into my battery to get it above the plates. A week later it had seeped out and when I took the battery out I could see that I had to immediately fix this area before it completely rusts out and I have a much worse mess on my hands. I decided to fix the problem and install a battery box.

 

[jinman]

Re: Jim\'s Boomer Battery Box

The first step was to remove the shelf and clean off as much rust as possible to prepare for treatment with rust converter. I used Loctite Extend, but there are several of these on the
market and they all take light rust and turn it to a hard black paintable surface. I've used a similar product on other projects and they are still doing fine over 10 years later. I have lots of confidence in this "stuff" and I don't know why it's not advertised a lot more. A couple of topcoats of paint and my shelf was ready to reinstall.

 

[jinman]

Re: Jim\'s Boomer Battery Box

The original shelf had a 1/2" thick foam insert under the radiator to seal the area. On the Deluxe model tractors the hood also has a rubber seal so all air has to go thru the fine screen inserts which work very well to keep the radiator from clogging with grass and trash. This foam seems to always be the first "victim" of the battery acid and it's useful life is short.
I think NH should have come up with a much better material. Recently I bought a pickup truck bedliner from Tractor Supply and it is a heavy rubber mat. I used most of the bedliner on
my girlfriends Kawasaki Mule, but had a few pieces left over. One of those I cut and made a custom seal for my battery shelf to replace the original foam. It works like a charm and I'm sure that if this rubber ever does get battery acid or antifreeze or hydralic oil leaking on it, it will be as good afterwards as it is now.

 

[jinman]

Re: Jim\'s Boomer Battery Box

Okay, now things start to get interesting because I don't quite have enough room for the battery box to fit on the shelf. I noticed that there's a lot of room between the tranny cooler and the radiator. On the new Boomers the cooler has been raised and positioned closer to the radiator. After postioning the cooler and seeing that everything would fit, I decided to bend the supports and position it almost 1" closer to the radiator. It's going to be a tight fit, but I think I can make it work. YEA!

 

[jinman]

Re: Jim\'s Boomer Battery Box

Now that I have more room, I need to clamp the box into place. I don't want to drill holes in the bottom and bolt the box to the shelf because if there are battery leaks, the fasteners would just rust out and the box would leak. I decided my best protection from leaks would be to cut slots in the side of the box and use the battery clamps to hold the box in place. After assembly, I can use clear silicone seal to fill any gaps around the clamps (yellow arrow) and make them airtight. There will also be a 1" deep "pan" in the bottom of the box. That will catch any minor liquid seepage and keep it off my shelf. To make everything work I had to do three things:
1. cut the ridge off the sides of the OEM battery (normal batteries don't have this anyway)
2. grind the half-round ridge off the clamp so it will fit flush with the battery box and allow the upside down "L" shape to go into the slot in the battery box (if you ever look at the clamp, you'll see what I mean)
3. make an "L" shaped bolt hole slot in the metal support bracket to also allow the lip of the clamp to fit into the box (shown with red arrow). I could have ground down the side of the support, but shaping the bolt hole seemed a better solution.

These three things allowed me to get a firm grip on the battery box with the clamp and also allowed the battery to fit snugly inside the box after it was clamped into place.

Notice the area of the green arrows. Although you can't see it, there is a rubber grommet edge on the hood that fits firmly against the front of the battery shelf to make a seal. What I didn't notice was 4" above the seal there is a ridge running inside the hood and it would hit the battery box at the
position of the higher green arrows and the hood would not close. I still have some work to do to get that little bit of room I need. And one other "slight problem" see my next post for another challenge.

 

[jinman]

Re: Jim\'s Boomer Battery Box

This is not nearly as much fun as I thought it was going to be. See how neat the battery box looks with the top on? Well... it seems the back of the headlights and their connectors want to
occupy the same space. This is NOT going to work.

 

[jinman]

Re: Jim\'s Boomer Battery Box

Here's my final solution. While it doesn't look as pretty, I think it's a better solution than putting the top on the battery box. I still had some of that bedliner material left over. I cut one piece so it fits inside the box over the top of the battery and another just wider than the box fits over the battery box like an umbrella. Any rain coming into the "hole in the roof" will not sit on top of the battery or fill up the battery box. My "umbrella" will keep water off the battery.

But what about the extra room I needed? Well, I cut the slots in the box longer and pushed the bottom of the box in about 3/4". You can see the box is slightly tilted. This was all the space I needed and the hood clears. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[jinman]

Re: Jim\'s Boomer Battery Box

YEA! The finished box will keep acid off the front of my tractor and I have a choice of using an Optima type SLA battery or a normal lead-acid battery. I can probably find some sheet rubber that isn't so thick and ugly for my "umbrella" material, but hey, I'm not trying to win any beauty contests with my tractor. I'm just trying to keep it's nose from rusting off. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

There have been many solutions to this problem. Quite frankly, ol' PineRidge has a solution that looks a lot more professional than mine /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif, but I think we'll both be happy that we saw a problem and would not let it continue until we made an improvement on NH's design. I just got this battery box "fixation" and I wasn't going to give up until I put one on my tractor. What do you think? /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[Mrwurm]

Re: Jim\'s Boomer Battery Box

Excellent work !

This post was well presented and fun to read /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif