Electron redistribution

Peugeot is a company with a long and storied history of racing. From rally to Le Mans to LeMons, Peugeots have been tearing things up. Pujo!'s 505 brethren were very successfully raced in SCCA showroom stock in the 80's. With this sort of pedigree, Pujo! is rightfully considered a racing thoroughbred. If this is the case, why did Peugeot place the 505's battery on the driver's side in the very front of the engine compartment? Clearly, we needed to rectify this design oversight.

A saucy little minx we know provided an informative guide to battery relocatification using the cable from an e30 chassis BMW 3 series car. The 6 cylinder versions of these cars come with a trunk mounted battery (it's even mounted on the passenger side!) and a long-ass battery cable that an impecunious monkey can score for the cheap price of $6.00.

Off to the self service junkyard!

Of the two e30 Bimmers in the junkyard, one was a 6 cylinder. It was quite a rat of a car. The fact that we were experiencing an unusually strong downpour helped by providing shivering cold to distract from the skankiness of this particular car. Pictured is the positive battery cable after I freed it from a pile of assorted wet garbage in the trunk. It snakes through a tight little hole behind the back seat and runs up along the floor on the passengers side of the car, secured with several hundred little plastic clips.


After stuffing the cable through the trunk and into the passenger compartment, the cable was fairly easily freed from its hiding place in the floor. In the picture you can see part of the cable coiled up in the passenger compartment, along with the speaker grill / kick panel that was liberated to allow the other end of the cable to come through firewall from the engine compartment. Notice the hammer perched on top of the toolbox? That's a BMW special tool for interior trim removal.

With the cable removed from the scheiße BMW, insertion into Pujo! commenced.

This involved relaxing contorting oneself into a shape that allows working amongst the racing seat mounts, roll cage, and pointy sharp crap on the floor of the car.


A bunch of pleasant discussion cursing allowed an installation solution to be found.



We had enough cable length to stretch from Pujo!'s original battery connection to the trunk, where the battery resides in cozy flammability next to the fuel tank. Note that Doug did build a really nice battery enclosure, it's just not pictured here (it's shy).