Hey everyone. I just thought I'd share this with you all, I'm total 1/12th scale newb but after a whole week of having a 12l3 I got sick enough of taping in the batteries that I wanted to either sell the car and buy a CRC, or figure something else out. So I came up with my own graphite battery straps.

This probably isn't an entirely unique idea, and I'm sure someone has already done it, but after searching around I found nothing so I thought others might enjoy checking this out. These just were finished today so they are basically in their beta stage..

http://home.comcast.net/~desolas/pos...3_overhead.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~desolas/posted/12l3_top.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~desolas/posted/12l3_side.jpg

First I tried mounting the straps so they were inline with the chassis and not bowed out at the rear and pointing towards the centerline but I could tell doing it that way would let the rear cell kick out if hit hard enough; plus it also required drilling another hole through the rear brace and using a screw/nut to mount in the rear which was a pain in the ass to remove. The rear mount of the strap just uses the existing brace mount screw.

The contour to the rear outside of the brace lets it swing out against the body post so you don't need to totally remove the rear screw. Toward the front of the brace, on the underside of it is another piece of carbon glued in to act as a battery stop. I think it will work fine without foam, but I put the foam in as added security to keep the cells from going forward in a major hit which I think could happen .. but if I were to glue a stop to the chassis itself I think the two would be enough to keep the cells in place even in a major hit.

The front mounts are made from the Pro4 battery hold down posts. No modification made other than cutting the index tab off the bottom of it.

The carbon itself may look familiar, I cut it out from a old 12L3 chassis but you can see how easy it would be to make it from any carbon or fiberglass stock. It can easily be made to look nice and clean. I could see using old t-plates to make them. I'm going to track test them and see if they work, if they do I'll sculped them down and try to trim as much weight off them as I can. Then put them into mass production and make 10 million dollars. jk