Interstate Battery Mounting Bracket Modification

[Captain Obvious]

I put an Interstate Battery (Group 24) in my 77 280 a couple years ago and I never liked the way the battery hold-down fit. Interstate has a stepped lip along the top of the battery that is juuuuusssst a little too big to fit inside the hold down bracket, resulting in a small contact patch on the top surface of the battery that is too small to provide what I consider a good reliable contact. In fact, it usually slips off one side or the other and wedges itself in on an angle. It's probably not just me, and I bet all you Interstate users know what I'm talking about.

Here's the stepped lip that runs around the entire top of the Interstate. The inside dimensions of the battery hold-down bracket are just too small to fit around this lip:

So I took matters into my own hands... I figured that my battery hold-down was rusty anyway and probably wasn't long for this world, I decided to try to make the situation better. With that in mind, I opened up the center hole in the original bracket a little bit to allow it to fit snug down against the step on the Interstate battery. I ran masking tape along the top of the bracket to give me a quick-n-dirty guide for how much material to remove and started grinding. I used an angle grinder for the bulk removal and a file to even it out and get into the corners:

In this pic, you can see how much metal needed to be removed from the long sides of the bracket. If you look carefully at the top edge, I have removed metal back to the tape line near the corner, but towards the left side there is still metal beyond the tape. That's about how far back it needs to me removed to fit over the lip:

And when you've done that process to all four inside edges, the modified bracket now fits snug and square against the top of the lip of the Interstate:

The rear mounting hole is almost out of travel, but with a washer under the bolt head it still catches just fine:

On my long term to-do list is to make up a full custom stainless bracket specifically for the Interstate, but until then this one fits way better than how it did originally. No more squirming battery and no more worry about shorting the battery cables to the mounting bracket since the bracket is now a half inch below the cable connections:

[siteunseen]

My name is Cliff and I'm an Interstate user.

I've hit rock bottom and am using bungee cords daily. 

I have the courage to change the things I can and with your wisdom I now know the difference.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 27, 2017 by siteunseen

[SteveJ]

Jai's battery was tied down when I first saw her car, and the battery was smaller than stock. I made a bracket for her that would work on the battery she had, but it could be adjusted later for a stock sized battery.

 

[Jeff G 78]

Several years ago, I posted on here the design of an Optima bracket I made.  I have never tried it with a regular battery, but I don't see why it wouldn't work exactly the same with a few simple mods.  It doesn't look stock like yours, but it was pretty simple to make.  I have one in my street car and another in my race car.

 

 

[JSM]

1 hour ago, Jeff G 78 said:

Several years ago, I posted on here the design of an Optima bracket I made.  I have never tried it with a regular battery, but I don't see why it wouldn't work exactly the same with a few simple mods.  It doesn't look stock like yours, but it was pretty simple to make.  I have one in my street car and another in my race car.

 That is nice.  Like a modern car hold down.

[Jeff G 78]

The brackets are made from very simple materials I bought at Home Depot and cut/welded together.  I think they took about an hour to make.  I did powder coat the silver one shown.  The previous one was painted in black wrinkle finish.

Not sure if Photobucket will even let me post any more, but I did find old pics of my street Z's bracket installed.

[Captain Obvious]

Thanks guys! Yep, there are many ways to address the battery hold-down. I made that mod to an already needing to be replaced stock hold-down because it was free and was the fastest way to fix the problem for now. The long term pic is to fashion something similar to stock, but completely out of stainless.

Jeff, your homemade bracket looks good. I've seen styles like that which are narrow through the center in case it had to fit between raised fill caps. You didn't need to worry about that with the Optima.