Bratwurst Modifications

Project: Bratwurst - Modifications

Depending on available funds (not to be confused with remaining budget!) this section might be a bit brief! The initial and possibly most substantial modification of course is the weight loss program but others are planned. It just depends whether I can afford them or not.

Battery Relocation & Isolation Device

To improve weight distribution I moved the battery from under the bonnet to the alternative location under the rear seat base. The bracketry was already there and there was even a convenient power junction box to wire in to.

Original battery location.

Note the black plastic junction box bolted to the strut tower.

Battery tray unbolts revealing the support bracket.

Which was cut off.

All gone.

The plastic junction box mounted to the strut tower is opened...

...and a new thick power cable is added.

The new cable runs through an existing bulkhead bung into the cabin and then along the sill to the new battery location.

Rear under-seat battery location ready to accept the battery.

The ingenious battery isolation device consists of a humble bulldog clip and a piece of string. You will notice I have used an old Ford square post type battery. Well as you can see from the pictures, the earth lead is simply held in place by the bulldog clip. This is attached to the rear door by a piece of string. In the event of an emergency the rear door is opened, pulling the bulldog clip from the battery post allowing the earth lead to safely fall clear of the battery thus disconnecting it from the vehicle. The magazine was so impressed by it that they awarded it 'best modification'.

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Bucket Seats & Harnesses

This potential modification was a bit of a win, I managed to purchase two old Corbeau bucket seats for £10! They were pretty tatty and hardly state of the art but for £10 they were a bargain and a lot more effective than my previous plan of gluing extra bits of foam to the existing seat to try and make my own bolsters!

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So I set about butchering the passenger seat to try to make some suitable seat rails.

Passenger seat underside.

Seat mounting frame.

Rail portions freed from the frame.

Slicing off the lower face of the seat rails.

Finally, a pair of fixed rails.

Back in position in the car ready for mounting the new seats to.

Sadly that's as far the fitment of the bucket seats got.
The harness I was intending to use was an old aircraft flight crew seat harness I had managed to acquire. It had a nice feature in that the shoulder straps were on a recoiling inertia reel system like a normal seatbelt so you could still lean forward. Like a normal seat belt it would lock under a shock load and it could also be manually locked via a small lever on the end of a teleflex that would typical be mounted on the side of the seat base.

Lockable recoiling aircraft flight crew harness.

Recoil locking lever.

This label is older than my wife!

It would have looked the nuts!

Induction / Turbo!

The original idea here was to remove the air filter box and feed cold air straight from the front of the car into the airflow meter. This involved removing the internal intake trumpet from within the air filter housing, remounting it in place of one of the headlamp main beam units and connecting the two with some suitable ducting.

I then got offered a used turbo for not a lot of money and started having silly ideas.

I even got as far as picking up an ebay special exhaust manifold.

But three things happened that put paid to the idea.
1) There is insufficient space on a right hand drive car for the exhaust pipe to exit past the block without fouling on the steering column.
2) I ran out of time.
3) I didn't have enough money for all the rest of it anyway.
So my boosted aspirations remained just a pipe dream.

Mobirise

Suspension

As this is a subject in itself it gets its own section.

Mobirise

The contents of this website are purely a reflection of my own experiences and knowledge gained whilst working on my various projects. Anything you do based on what you have read here is done so entirely at your own risk.
Personally I wouldn't trust someone like me with a lawn mower! You have been warned! Flapper-bat!

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