Thread: How to remove/move battery to trunk GXP/GTP/GT

How to replace and/or move battery to trunk in a Grand Prix GXP
So for starters…follow these steps in the below link to remove the batter and replace it if that all you want to do. If you want to move the battery to the trunk as I did continue reading and looking at the pictures for the how to.

http://www.gpona.com/forums/gxp-area...cs-t26509.html

Now for moving the battery to the trunk (means you will never have to do all that again to replace the battery or anything)

Your shopping car needs to include the following
20feet of zero or 2 gauge wire
Ring terminal connectors for whatever gauge wire you got. I think 4 will be enough.
Ring terminals for 4 gauge wire. 2 but I would have a 3^rd just to have a spare
1.5 feet of ground wire
Battery – I got an optima red top Group size 34/78 battery
Specs – 800 cold cranking amps; 1000 cranking amps; 41 pounds; and a 100min reserve capacity
Battery terminals
Sand Paper
Power Distribution Post (I made one which I will show on down so you can see. Mainly I didn’t want to wait till after Christmas so I just made one)
Solder if you want. But you could use a hammer instead. I soldered and hammered mine.
http://www.iem-services.co.uk/asps/u.../big/977-1.jpg


So for starters…….I thought in order to remove the fuse box you had to take all the fuses out…..and I did. But luckily I had this to go off of because I was smart enough to take a picture first

Picture of everything taken apart



Now for your distribution block…if you so choose to make your own as I did.
I used two pieces of wood and jb welded them together

Then drilled a hold and alse made ¼ of the hole large enough for the head of the bolt to go back into the wood so it doesn’t touch any part of the inside of the car. (Would be bad if it did)

To fill the hole in its filled with mostly jb weld then a layer of caulking I had laying around just as a precaution.

The mess I made during the construction of this creative piece of work. O and I painted mine black.


That is the block mounted under the hood. I did drill another hole for it to mount there with and also drilled a hold in the metal of the car. I haven’t filled that hole in yet…but have every intention to soon.

Now the stock ground under the hood will need to be grounded somewhere…here was my original location…but I ended up having to put it else where


Just some pics


In the below picture you can see the grounding point that I ended up using


Here you can see how the distribution block I made works….its kinda like the awesomeness of the car


And close up of grounds


For running all the wires through the car…..i used this hole and the grommet. Just cut the grommet a little bigger and you can fit things through it


This is how 91ParkAve did his. Just so you can see other ways

And his ground point

And another of his


Update with more pics and a few more tid bits of information.

so the above pic is where I currently have my ground but with my car the sheet metal isn't a good enough ground for the starter to crank the motor over well so i am having to run another 0 gauge wire to the engine block to carry the current....doing that tomorrow.

this battery is an absolute beast....had it tested and it has 994CCA and is only rated for 800. if only my grounds were good enough. and that 13+ volts is with the car off lol

i placed my battery on the passenger side of the car as close to the rear seats as possible. i do have a battery box to put it in though just to protect it.



And i need more torches

More pictures tomorrow after i clean up some. Also would be nice if a mod could stickey this in the 5.3 section pretty please

Don't forget to throw some clear rtv silicone over the ground so it dose t rust and corrode and great job on the swap!!

Good idea. So I tested all my voltage at every possible place. And the resistance of my ground wire. And their all good. But I still have that starting issue. I'm thinking my ground wire may be to long. Its exactly 3 ft. I can shorten it at least a foot easily. Right now it has a resistance if 00.000 though

what is the starting issue exactly?

3 foot ground wire should not hurt anything.

It doesn't wanna crank very well. Like the first turn over it struggles really hard and I can't figure out why.

are you using a new battery? or a older one?

seems like something has a weak connection if the battery is in good shape.

Battery is brand new. With car turned off it sits around 13.1 volts. I had it tested last night and is putting out 994 CCAs and is only rated for 800. I dunno what else to check cause everything looks good

did you run a new power wire to the starter with all the new stuff?

if not maybe that wire is bad and the currents not flowing good from far away.

if you see copper at the ends of the wires near the end loops, that wire is suspect.

Hmmmm...I shall investigate further and report back my findings

sheetmetal bodies are horrible high current ground paths...

run a seperate 2ga ground cable from batt to block under the car (no chance of short on ground)

then youll have a nice snappy crank

sheetmetal grounds suck

Which block under car?

the engine block/bellhousing studbolt

The battery is in trunk. Are u referring to the ground wires under the hood? There's a few grounds there

primary high current draw is the starter, your just making sure it has the least amount of voltage drop at full current load

once the bat neg post is connected directly to the block/bellhousing ground bolt... you wont have any more issues but id also suggest a ground bridge to the unibody/sheetmetal grounds

I can't connect battery negative post to block...its all the way in trunk. That'd be a 16 foot ground wire!

exactly

Longer the ground wire...the more resistance. Everyone I know says the shortest ground possible is best

...but when that 150-250 amp surge is trying to turn your engine over...that "short ground wire" becomes a:

battery neg terminal>ring terminal>wire>ring terminal> sheetmetal>series of spotwelds>sheetmetal>series of spotwelds>sheetmetal>spotwelds>sheetmetal> spotwelds>sheetmetal (now we are at the pass front unibody rail)> ring terminal>wire>terminal>groundbolt>starter motor negative windings

or it can flow:
batt>ring terminal>high grade fine strand copper wire>ring terminal>ground bolt

try to guess which is the one thats gonna flow a large amount of current with the least amount of voltage drop

use a set of jumper cables and run a quick test ground from the bat neg to a bracket on the motor...id bet it cranks over much better