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This weekend, I prepped the car to be able to add a BABY SEAT to it!
I removed the rear batteries, and welded angle iron on either side of the battery box. That gave me a place to drill a hole and run a carriage bolt through the plywood lid down into a solid, frame-like member.
I also replaced the bottom insulation, with some thinner insulation, a double layer of coroplast. That was because the battery tops actually stuck up just a tad over the top of the battery box. Now just sit just a hair below it. Makes a difference once you actually want to bolt the cover down.
This is something that I have actually been meaning to do for sometime, it was just never that big a deal, or that important. With our first child on the way, I really wanted to get set up to be able to mount a baby seat in the back of the car.
I reinstalled both rear seat belts. There was a minimal amount of modification required to do so. (Safety features are one of those things that shouldn't be messed with.)
Mostly the "clicker" end of the seat belts just had to be pulled up over the plywood lid. I also added some rubber tubing on the edge of the metal box there, so that there wouldn't be any chafing of the seat belt if the plywood lid didn't line up the way I expected it to.
I also swapped out two of the Deka Gel Cells that weren't performing well for a pair of second-hand AGMs of the same size. Now all the batteries in the rear box are the same make and model.
The back seat looks pretty good now. The batteries all match. The cover bolts down. Looks like it's all ready for the baby!
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