The tailshaft boxes are the most complex in shape, and the most difficult to fit. In retrospect, perhaps they were more trouble than they are worth, but we wanted to get the maximum number of cells in the car, so that the peak battery pack C rate would be as low as possible (design centre: 6C or 240 A).
Here is one of them completed:
Note the bright orange conduit between two of the blocks of cells. It gets busy in there, as you will see later. The gap between cell blocks is to accommodate the main chassis rail, which descends at that point. The second image shows the anderson connector resting on top of the battery box; that area gets rather busy too. Did I mention that this MX-5 is a bit cramped?
Here they are in the car:
The second image is looking forward up the transmission tunnel. The crossed black "bars" at the top are actually the handbrake cables.
In fact, the handbrake cables were a special pain; there is more detail in these images.
The clips/brackets around the handbrake cables are just a nuisance now; where they used to attach to the chassis is now used as one of the three anchor points for the tailshaft battery boxes. The clips have been removed now.
You can see how busy the area between the tailshaft box battery blocks gets:
Even the 35 mm of space above these two battery boxes (there is a fuel-tank box above them, next to be installed) gets busy:
At the right, under the Peter Pan curtains, is the rear fuel tank battery box and convertible top. At the middle left is the gearbox console and handbrake lever, attached at the two red "eyes". You can see two orange conduits that go under the car, roughly along the route the exhaust pipe used to take, to contactor boxes under the bonnet. These are in 25 mm underground-quality conduit, the only type of orange conduit that we could find. This almost but not quite fits two double insulated 16 mm^2 cables, so the conduit had to be flattened somewhat (1.5 turns in a vice) to make them somewhat oval shaped. We then used a citrus based cleaner to lubricate the cables, and drew them in with a steel wire that hooked onto cable lugs. It was quite an effort getting the cables into the conduit. When we realised that we'd have to do the second one (for the other battery half-pack), we were disappointed, and the extra time possibly cost us getting the first half-pack completed yesterday. Still, the second cable took less than half the time for the first one.
The idea of the two pieces of string tied to the handbrake cables is to attempt to have the handbrake cables gently move out of the way when lowering down the front fuel-tank box, which goes down into that space.
[ Edit: added last paragraph; other minor clarifications. ]
Nissan Leaf 2012 with new battery May 2019.
5650 W solar, 2xPIP-4048MS inverters, 16 kWh battery.
1.4 kW solar with 1.2 kW Latronics inverter and FIT.
160 W solar, 2.5 kWh 24 V battery for lights.
Patching PIP-4048/5048 inverter-chargers.