Finish Battery Boxes!! Finally

Hello, everyone! I made a lot of progress on the truck this week. I took vacation days on Tues, Weds, and Thurs. Each day I put in 10-12 hours to get to the place where I am today. My twitter friends may have noticed me more absent than usual on these days.

Quick review, from the last post we had just welded in the rear of axle battery box. This box holds 8 batteries. Before this week began, I had several weekends of welding fun. I completed all the welding on the front of axle boxes last weekend. On Tuesday myself and Mike welded the front 2 boxes to the truck frame. Wednesday was spent grinding things down to look pretty and then I began sandblasting the frame to get it ready to prime. This was my first experience at sandblasting (much the same as a lot of "firsts" on this project) and to say the least, it was interesting. When I was finished, I had sand everywhere! There was sand all over me, also, in places I didn't know existed! :) It sure cleaned up the rust and left everything very clean.

The remainder of the last day and a half, I spent priming all the metal of the frame and the battery boxes. I used Rustoleum Professional Primer from Home Depot. It took 4 large spray cans to complete. In retrospect, I should have used my air compressor and a spray gun....Oh, well! Everything about this project has been a learning experience.

I was finished using my 4 purchased batteries as templates, so I installed them into the battery rack under the hood. They are ready to be cabled together. You can see these in the photos. You will notice the "Energizer" labels on the batteries. This truck will be powered by the Energizer Bunny! (or several thousand of them running mindlessly around a circular belt)

That about wraps it up for this post...next up is topcoating everything you see in red to flat black. I am getting real close to purchasing the remaining 20 batteries. I even checked them out at Sam's Club to make sure they had enough in stock. Until the next post....keep moving forward..... :)