 |
 |
 |
Battery Box & Rear Cover
I've been trying to find a way of stopping the tonneau cover
from filling up with rain like a pond - this always seems to happen with
Mini pickups. The solution's obvious - put some structure underneath to
hold it up and stop the water from collecting. I started out thinking of
building some kind of lightweight frame, but could never really work it
out without it threatening to look bad.
Then, I had a flash of genius, and some good luck !
At the South Wales Mini Festival last summer, we had a couple of large dry-wipe
marker boards. These were saved from a skip, they were being thrown out
because they had a couple of shallow dents in them... what a waste!
After being useful at the show, they ended up in my garage... these panels are 3 feet x 4 feet, and about 1/2 inch thick. They're actually two sheets of painted steel, bonded together with a honeycomb of paper. Aluminium extrusions and plastic corner pieces finish off the edges. By an amazing fluke, one of them is just the right size to make a rigid lid that can hinge up, making a great cover for the bed of the pickup! To go around the sides of the panel since it's not quite wide enough, I needed to make some other bits. This is complicated since the pickup actually tapers as you go from the cab towards the back ... it's 2 inches narrower back there ... there's no such thing as a straight line in a Mini!
I tried cutting up one of the panels to make the required bits, but the panel just wasn't long enough, leaving some tricky joints that would never look right. So in the end, I went down to the DIY store and bought a big sheet of plywood, and got them to cut it in half so it'd fit in the car. Once back in the garage, I marked it out and cut it with the jigsaw. Now, I have the required shape, with a big cutout for the hinging panel. This is all cleverly designed so that it will clear the lights bar I've got, which will be bolted down here. A couple of gas struts should do nicely for helping it to open and stay open whilst I'm servicing the battery pack.
The new tonneau cover I've already got will go over the top, keeping it all waterproof...
|
|
|
The battery box is another tale of luck and good fortune...
Our new neighbour has been having a lot of work done on his house - new wiring, central heating, and an attic conversion! This is great for me, 'cos there's heaps of scrap bits just waiting to go into the skip! One of these bits was the old boiler... the steel side panels looked like they really didn't want to go into the skip... so they went and hid in my garage! By another one of those amazing flukes ( I'm beginning to think "Someone Up There" likes my Electric Mini Pickup project ) they are just the right size to make sides for the rear section of the battery box.... they're even the right width to go from the loadbed floor right up to the rigid cover - can you believe that? |
 |
The box will end up being a thick T shape, to maximise the
space whilst keeping the construction simple. My latest
bit of good luck ( I must be due to run out soon ) was the builders
next door decided they didn't want the last sheet of insulation
board... this is a 4 foot x 8 foot sheet of 2 inch
thick rigid foam, with aluminium foil on each face. And there's just enough
to do one battery box for an electric Mini pickup!
So now my batteries won't get a chill in winter...
...yes I know two inches of insulation is total overkill here
in soggy Wales, but since it was free, why not?