The old battery tray, even though galvanised and painted, was accumulating surface rust and, at the near-side top corner, was already eaten away. Whilst this wasn’t a structural issue it’s never good to have large areas of live rust in a car so I replaced it with a stainless tray.
The bulkhead mounting was in good condition and the bolts had been copper slipped so there were no issues with removal.
There have been two pop-riveted patches added to the lower mounting points and these had acquired some surface rust. Whilst I can’t replace the bulkhead or realistically remove the patches, treating them with ACF-50 (curtsey of the fine folks at TomB engineering) and removing the bigger rust source of the battery tray should stop things getting worse.
After cleaning up a few burs left over from manufacturing, the new tray fits in as the reverse of the removal of the old one. It secures using 8mm bolts and the two dim-dip relays fit on the off-side mountings. The battery negative earth also fits on the top off-side mount. (It’s the yellow wire in the picutre which was taken shortly before I realised I had missed it off and re-fitted it.)
The replacement yoke retainer rods came with basic nuts and a couple of washers but the old nuts had a flange that acted as a load surface against the springs so I kept those and used the washers on the yoke end of the spring.
