A 2nd Battery

I have been planning a 2nd battery for over a year. I have the isolator and a switching unit but have never gone to the trouble of getting everything ready for the battery to go in. I recently purchased the recommended power steering reservoir bracket from a Discovery. Due to it's shape it moves the reservoir out from the front bulkhead and out of the way of the battery box.

The vacuum pump will still need to be moved, but I can do that when I investigate the vacuum leak I have had that disabled my cruise control. In moving the reservoir the air cleaner assembly is now in the way. So it was necessary to move it as well. The brackets that hold it in place are now in the way of the present coil and the relocated ignition amplifier module.

I started by pulling everything out and getting it "loose" so I could try different configurations of the components in the space provided. I then installed the new power steering pump reservoir bracket and fitted the reservoir. You can see the difference in the brackets here. The brackets that came with the Range Rover are the two on the left. They are combined in the bracket you see on the right. With this image you can see how the new bracket compares to the current one. You can get the bracket at any Rover salvage yard. I got mine at Rover Cannibal.

So I moved the components around on the fender. The vacuum bottle is there as well. After the relocation I need to move the vacuum bottle without replacing the vacuum hoses so I endevoured to build a new bracket to raise it above the coil. This was used with a vise and a piece of 1 inch steel flat bar stock. Not hard to come up with, I had some laying around. I bent it in to a horseshoe or "U" shape. I drilled it after lining up the holes with the vacuum bottle and the holes on the fender.

I then reassembled the air breather and holding the brackets in place I found where the brackets needed to be on the fender well and marked the fender for drilling.

All this took a few hours to complete. It was necessary to drill more holes in the fender which now has the consistency of swiss cheese. But this is okay because a good part of the holes are covered by plates and such after the final install was completed.

On the Difficulty Scale this job rates a 2. And only because some creative thinking was involved. And I had to manufacture a bracket. Otherwise it is only moving a few bolts and drilling a few holes. No new tools needed.

I hope to have a snorkel in there some day and now have a good idea of what it will take to make my own snorkel kit.