After showing you how to bolt on your Triumph frame section; today, in this step by step how-to video, Tyler shows you how easy it is to install a Gasbox Universal Battery Box securely while using our Lowbrow Customs Coped Steel Bungs on a Triumph bobber project of Todd's. There are endless options on how you could mount this battery box but we found this way to be one of the easiest. It's clean looking, and very efficient when it comes to hardtailed motorcycles with a bottom cross tube. So grab a beverage, get on out to that garage of yours, fire up that welder and get to work!
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You can read a full transcription of this video below:
Hey. It's Tyler with Lowbrow Customs. I am going to do a little bit of work on a motorcycle with this bike Todd from Lowbrow is putting together and thought it was a good opportunity to show you a Gasbox universal battery box in use. There's many ways you can use them and mount them. I'm going to show you a nice easy clean method that works especially well for motorcycles that have a cross tube like that and the hardtail frame.
The universal battery box could be mounted to anything with two holes in it. You could always weld a piece of flat strap with holes in it, you could weld tabs coming off of a cross member. The way I'm going to show you is using some of these bungs. These are lowbrow customs Universal fabricator bungs, these are 1-inch OD. Here's an open set. They are coped for 1-inch tubing already and it's a perfect fit and they're tapped 5/16 18 thread which is a standard thread. Now, the Gasbox battery box came with quarter-inch hardware.
I'm also going to show you how to take this is some stainless 5/16 hardware the proper size for these threaded bungs and I'll show you how I'm going to drill and counterbore that battery tray to work with this hardware. It makes install super clean, stable and easy. I'm going to show you how to end up locating the bungs properly, getting your battery box all nice and centered straight plumb tack weld finish weld bolt in place and that's a really straightforward process and it's very durable and it looks great. Here is our Gasbox battery tray base. You can see it's countersunk for quarter-inch hardware. The 5/16 hardware I'm going to use it doesn't fit through.
The first step I'm going to do is drill those holes out for 5/16. We've got a 5/16 drill bit in here, put a little lube on it. This will just take a moment. Now, the hardware fits through but the head is not sitting flush into that countersink because the countersink is set up for a smaller quarter-inch bolt. The next thing I'm going to do is change up my drill bit for a countersink. This countersink has the proper angle that matches the taper on that head and it will allow me to make these chamfers deeper. I'm basically going to remove a little material, put the hardware in until it sits its flush and take a little bit at a time it's all to get the proper depth.
When doing any countersinking and really drilling or anything, it's good to use a little bit of light lubrication on there or keep you from making your conversings dull prematurely. All I'm doing is getting the initial countersink to open that up. To make sure I don't go too deep, I'm just going to go ahead and test. Now, it fits better than it did but that head is still proud of the material. I'm going to go ahead and relieve it a little bit more. This being aluminum, I'm not clamping the workpiece, I'm just holding with my hand and the countersink it'll self-center the piece and hold it loosely. I'll pull it right in as you go. You could clamp this down and make sure everything is really secure if you want.
All right, almost there. It's a lot better but we really want the head of that sitting flush with this base so the battery is sitting on the bottom of the tray and not just riding on the bolt heads. Almost there I'll just have more and we're good to go. There we go, perfect. Next thing is to do the exact same process on the second hole. Perfect, there we go. We're ready to go. All right. Now that we have modified the battery tray for the larger hardware the next step is I'm going to simply pop this through and I'm going to thread the bungs in place like so. Just a loose-leaf right now.
Something important to point out about this hardware, I actually shorten these because I didn't have the proper length here in my garage. These are Flathead Allen. Now the proper length if you're going to basically do the same style install I'm doing it's 5/8, seven inch or 0.625 inches. With a flathead Allen, you actually measure the length from the top of the head to the flat normally with almost any bolts you measure from under the head but since these countersink into the material, you're looking at that overall length. If you need to order Hardware or go to the local hardware store, get yourself some 5/8s flathead Allens. Again these are 5/16 18 thread.
I'll get these roughly into position. What I want to do here is just get an idea where this is going to sit on my cross tube and see how nicely that cope fits in that cross member. I left them slightly loose and I'll snug them up before I weld. My goal here is to get this position, figure out where on the tube I want in this direction and then also to make sure that I have it perpendicular to the bottom frame rail. You don't want to weld it all up, put your battery in there and then realize that your batteries all cattywampus. Something that I think is really worth mentioning is before I worry about getting this battery box perpendicular square to my frame, I need to ensure that my frame is as parallel to the ground.
I've got this lift under here, this blackjack just to steady the bike. I'm going to go ahead and lower that down because I want to make sure right now I know from setting it up that it lifted the front of the bike a bit. On this particular bike, I don't even know if there's fluid in the forks right now but I'm just going to pull down on that suspension and see where it sits. It brought it down a little from where it was. You have to remember as well that when a motorcycle has a rider on it when you're riding down the road it's under load it's going to sit a little differently.
Looking at this just eyeballing, it is a little higher in the front. That's fine. I just wanted to check and see where it's at. When I line up the battery tray, I'm still going to make sure that it's not vertical say to the lift table. I want to make sure it is nice and perpendicular to the frame rail. You don't want your motorcycle looking great and then your battery box is straight but it looks crooked compared to everything else. You can level your table, level your frame, get everything all set up but I'm going to do it the old-fashioned way and just eyeball it. If you stare at it long enough and you can't tell if it's crooked it's fine.
Another thing is I'm going to tack weld the bungs to the tube while they're bolted to this tray. It's a little bit more, you know, work getting up under there to tack weld them, but I'm going to get at least two solid tacks, maybe three on each of the bungs that ensures that when I unbolt the tray, remove it and finish weld the bungs, when everything's ready to go together, it's going to be a beautiful fit. It's going to bolt right up. I'm not going to have a hole off by a tiny bit and then you've messing around trying to file the hole or something like that. It's a total mess. By welding or tack welding, while you have everything together, it'll save you a lot of hassle later on.
The other thing I might mention is we've got the chain on this bike right now. It's really easy to forget about things like your chain. What we're going to do is just going to pick a happy spot for this battery box. Definitely keeping away from the chain because you can get a little side to side motion when you're riding and you don't want to have to worry later about your chain slapping your battery box and messing up your nice work. We're going to end up leaving a healthy margin in between the chain and the battery box.
The other thing is this is the side that the strap bolts to release your battery, you're obviously going to want easy access, so you'd want that on this side as opposed to the side where your chain is at. That's it. What I'm going to do is get the welder set up and prep that tube for tack welding and get this thing positioned and weld it up. I'm going to prepare to weld. First thing I'm going to do is clean off the tubing. I'm just using a little bit of Emery paper. I really actually like these rolls of plumbers Emery tape because it's really strong, convenient and you can do stuff really easily like this.
Take off any little bit of flash rust, any bit of oil scale, whatever. To get a nice clean weld, you really want to have clean surface to work with. Seem more than enough. It’s a natured alcohol, works for cleaning. Be careful. Don't kill yourself using brake clean and whatnot. All right, so that tube is ready to go. Same thing. I'm just going give these bungs are nice-- They're not covered in surface rust or anything. There is machine oil on them, so I'm going to go ahead and just for the heck of it, hit the outside edge all the way around just to clean off anything potentially there that might annoy me while I'm welding and suck into my weld pool.
Wipe these off real quick. Okay. Now I am ready. These are ready to be tack welded once I have everything located properly. To help me eyeball this in a very professional mathematical way, I'm going to go ahead and put the battery on there. This just gives me a larger visual to help me make sure that it's nice and straight. I did pull the right-hand exhaust pipe off. What I'm really going to look at is the underneath flat edge of the battery box compared to this rail. It's pretty easy to get these things lined up just by eye. Oh, there.
The other thing I'm going to check again is just eyeballing to see where the battery is sitting left to right in relation to the chain and just where I think it gets sufficient clearance and also looks good. Keeping in mind the mounting straps going to be coming down right here, allows you to access that without any issue. My tendency is, being slightly OCD, is the center that battery to the tire but that would give me a little less clearance than I think I would like from the chain. Right about there should work and now I will go ahead and level it front to rear again. It’s good. Okay. I am ready to give this a tack welder too and I like to do a couple tackles, stop, look at it again.
I've made the mistake in the past, you know, sometimes getting too excited, just go in and welding everything up, standing back happy with my work and then seeing something's totally crooked. When you tack weld, it pulls the metal in one direction or another. It's always good to tack opposite sides, kind of switch around and it'll help keep your piece a little more centered.
All right, so I went ahead and tack welded that real quick. Those were just fusion tacks, meaning I didn't use any fill rod, they're just temporary to hold this in place while I verify that nothing shifted or moved and it's exactly what I wanted before I go ahead and finish weld it. I couldn't really even see that well. Again, those were just little temporary welds. I'm going to end up unbolting this tray and taking a look and then I'm going to go ahead and finish weld the bungs actually real quick. Before I do that, let's take a look again. Looks spot on. I didn't think it moved at all while I was welding it, and the position looks great. I'm going to go ahead, remove this tray, finish weld the bungs, put it back together, and it's all done.
All right. Got these bungs finish welded. It’s a little pain in the butt having the bike pretty together like this, but got a nice beat all the way around, both of them. I'm going to throw a little bit of, this is never sees in a stick form. Since this hardware I’m using is stainless steel, I don't want it to gall and I've had it happen even while test-fitting, there's a little bit of grit or such an air can gall stainless, and then you're screwed. It's a little sees on there. Plus I just weld on these bungs and they're a little hot, not too hot, though.
I'm going to go ahead and bolt this in place. An alternative that never ceases, if you do use blue Loctite, blue Loctite will keep things stains from galling as well. The nice thing about the design of this hardware with this battery box, the way we're installing it, once you install the battery, it's holding the heads of these puts, so those can't physically back out. Your battery tray is going to stay nice and tight because it's going to have the battery itself holding the hardware and locking it physically in place.
All right, there's our nice new battery tray all securely mounted. Fit the battery up. Super simple and easy. This is the bolt washer and flange nut that come with the Gasbox, Universal Battery box. Look at that, lucky for us, that even clears that cross member. It might be a little difficult to, not difficult, but you have to fish this nut in there. Since you're only removing the tie-down strap when you're removing your battery, it's not a big deal, in my opinion.
There you have it, a nice, sturdy battery. It looks great to me. We have proper clearance with our chain. It's nice and straight, durable. It's not going to break. It's not going to crack off your bike and leave you on the side of the road. Check one more thing off the list, a handful more bits of fab work on this bike and it will be ready to tear down for a powder coat paint. It will be on the road. Summer is coming.
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