After deciding to go on a trip to the Flinders I had to way up what I needed to do to the XJ in preparation. One of the things that I had to have was a fridge and of course along with that a second battery to run it from. I also decided that this would also be great for work lights, fluros and anything else we might need around the campsite each night.
After a quick check around with potential suppliers I settled on the Piranha dual battery kit. It came with a tray, new radiator overflow bottle and a few bolts and bits and pieces. It doesn’t include the Isolator or any of the required cables. This was fine with me as I already had a RedArc isolator and was happy enough to sort out any cabling I needed.
Step 1
The first thing you need to do it to remove the current radiator overflow bottle. This was nice and easy and required taking out just one bolt and pulling the overflow hose off the bottle which was then easy to take out.
Step 2
Installing the battery cradle came next and this couldn’t have been much easier once I’d managed to move the existing cabling out of the way to get the cradle in there. It took a bit of pushing and wiggling to get it past the power steering hoses but not big deal. All bolted up it was time to move on to the radiator overflow bottle.
Step 3
Here I had some hassles that slowed me down. The overflow bottle cradle had to hook into a hole in the battery cradle and then line up with an existing stud, or in my case an existing hole that I had to pass a bolt through. The bolt caused me all sorts of grief as it went into the fender well and I had to hold the bolt from one side while I put the nut on the other. I made it harder for myself by deciding I didn’t want the thread end of the bolt poking into the wheel well where it could possibly damage the tyre so I had the head end in there instead and had to hold the cradle in place from one side while I passed the bolt through the fender, through the cradle and put the nut on. This alone took a good 20 minutes of mucking around.
The next problem I had was the overflow bottle cradle was rubbing on the hard brake lines from the master cylinder so I decided to take the cradle out again and trim a piece out of it where it touched the brake lines using my dremel. I also bent it slightly at the bottom to increase the clearance between it and the steering shaft.
After I put it back in I realised the threaded rod, that is part of the overflow bottle cradle, used to hold once side of the battery hold down bar was so long it would go through the bonnet if I slammed it shut. The dremel was used again to cut the top off the rod so it came to the same height as the j bolt used for the other side of the battery hold down.
Step 4
With both the supplied cradles in I slipped the batteries back in and out a few times while I adjusted the original wiring to its new route and then tightened everything up. I mounted the isolator just in front of the fuse box and ran my new wiring. I also run the overflow bottle hose along the side of the main radiator top hose to the new bottle position and I was done. All up it took me about 4 hours to get it done not including the new cabling for my fridge etc.
Its’ held up well over the corrugations on my Flinders trip and the battery hasn’t budged, all in all a great comfort when your camping and a fairly easy install. I’d probably recommend having a grinder or dremel on hand and ideally a second person as well.
XJ Cherokee
HG Premier
Dual Battery Install - CHEROKEE OWNER
