Batteries and Heat

I know it's pretty easy to fry a starter (poor Ol' Blue Bear kept dloing that with his hotrod in that compe***ion w/ Boyd Coddington), but I'm wondering about the effect heat is going to have on a battery.

Specifically:

I'm going to run a hoodlessand fenderless truck, and don't want to/have room to keep the battery under the cab floor or the bed, so I want to mount it in a box on the frame. The place where I think it would look best is about 6-8" away from the exhaust Y-pipe. I'm running duals on a slant six.

Do you think that would get the battery too hot, or will the air around it keep it cool enough?

Thanks,

Joe

 

6 to 8 inchs from the exhaust is plenty clearance, most cars i have built have had less and no problems

 

All I can tell you is from my experience.
The battery I had that lasted the longest of any that I've owned, was down in the fenderwell on my 48 Chevy coupe, about 10" away from the headers. I replaced several starters from the heat, but the battery lasted almost six years.
It could have been that I got a real good battery, the one I have in there now is two years old and still going strong.

 

90 degree bend in a piece of Stainless Steel would serve as a good deflector and chimney for air on both sides... exhaust from battery.

 

There are two ways for the heat to get to your battery, radiated heat (infra red radiation), and through convection by hot air drifting from the surface of your Y pipe to the battery. You can make a heat reflector out of aluminum or polished stainless steel to reflect the infra red radiated heat, and a lot of the hot air. If you sandwich two reflectors with some fibergl*** or mineral wool insulation stuffed between them, you'll block out even more heat. Try to position things so that cool air can get at the battery from somewhere else to keep the battery cool. Just make sure the jagged edge of the heat reflector doesn't chew through the insulation of the battery leads.

 

If you are interested in a factory style heat deflector, I have a suggestion.

Search the junkyards for a first generation SAAB 900 Turbo. Built from '79 to '92 I think.

The turbo exhaust housing on these cars was only two inches or so from the battery in the right front corner of the engine compartment. The battery hold down included an insulated shield which worked well.

I drove my '89 Turbo for eleven years on just two batteries, so the shield must have worked.

JB 472

 

well batteries have gone up in price a bunch this year. so i can see why you want to keep them good. the heat sheald should be good. you going with a drycell or lead acid?