A new battery box 08-16-14

I use a motorcycle battery to power my XM radio when I am at the cabin.
A few years ago I made a box for the battery out of cardboard that I painted with epoxy. This summer the bottom rotted out of the box so I needed a new one.

Yesterday I started to make another cardboard box but didn’t like the way it was going.
I got to looking around for something else to use for the box and came up with a .30 caliber M1 carbine ammo box.

The battery fit nicely into the box but I was concerned about corrosion and the battery shorting out against the metal box.
While I was looking for a solution I found an old antifreeze bottle that I had cut the side out of to use for another project. I set the battery in the jug and it fit close enough.

The only problem was one side of the bottle was missing so there was still a problem with the battery being exposed to the metal ammo box.
I got to looking around a bit more and came up with another antifreeze jug. Unfortunately this one was too wide to fit in the ammo box.

Now, what to do?
I realized that I had a Prestone antifreeze bottle in the RV.
I got it out and tried it in the ammo box and it fit. I poured the antifreeze from the Prestone bottle into the other empty one.

Next I cut the top off the Prestone bottle to the correct height.

Here are the parts for the Battery box.

The battery in the picture is an old one and not the one I ended up using.

The next thing I had to do was drill a couple of holes in the end of the ammo box for the on/off switch and receptacle.

I used a knockout punch to make the hole for the receptacle.

   

Then I wired in the switch and receptacle.

Next, I put some double stick foam tape on the bottom of the antifreeze bottle to keep it from moving around.

 
And put it in the Box.

The next thing to do was to drill some holes in the lid of the ammo box to allow venting.

I sprayed some 3M contact cement on the inside of the lid and on a thin piece of foam and stuck the foam to the inside of the lid.

I did this to keep the battery posts from touching the metal of the lid if the box got turned over or bounced around. The foam will also allow for venting.

Okay here is the battery box completed.

Lid open.

Lid closed.

That was a fun project and will be much better than the old battery box.