The MeLe mount has a sturdy retention bracket with a stainless steel hinge. No messing around with straps and wing nuts. It fits the battery exactly so you don’t have to worry about over-clamping it and damaging the battery internally either. Each mount is laser etched with a unique serial number for quality control identification. The mount’s box-like construction offers a layer of protection from mechanical damage to the battery.
The bracket is securely retained with this quick-release stainless steel pin that allows the battery to be removed in seconds without tools. With its nearly totally enclosed design, there is no way the battery is ever going to go anywhere and if it does, you probably have worse problems than a loose battery!
The battery mount base is CNC cut with many different mounting hole locations for the maximum amount of mounting possibilities. This gives the mount a ton of mounting flexibility. Since our Evo is now a valuable collector’s car, we did not want to drill any more holes in it than it already had. Fortunately, the Mele box had enough mounting flexibility for us to use the existing holes that were already drilled in the chassis.
Our new ATX-30 battery weighs in at a feathery 5.3lbs. This is lighter than our old racing battery which weighted 6.2 lbs. More power and a little less weight! Since the MeLe mount weighs 1 lb more than our original flimsy plastic battery tray and mounting hardware, we are saving a whopping 35 lbs of weight over the stock battery! This is weight high in the nose of the car right on the driver’s side or about the worst place to have weight in terms of performance! Going to a battery this light will be a feelable difference in handling and a great gain in overall performance. The AntiGravity battery is so light that the weight of the longer power cables makes mounting in the trunk superfluous. If we were to do it over again we would probably leave the super light battery in the engine compartment and save the overall weight of the cables.
Losing weight is a great performance gain because it helps acceleration, braking, and cornering. Losing large amounts of weight outside of a car’s wheelbase, especially in front of a front-heavy car is a great thing as well. Doing the math, we are really impressed with the results of this.
We did a study on the effects of battery location on corner weights many years back
We did another study on the effects of engine set back as well
If you read these articles you can see that getting a lightweight battery like this can have the same effect as moving the engine back a few inches in the chassis! Battery technology has improved a lot since we wrote the battery position story and batteries like the ATX-30 have become much lighter and way more powerful.
If you want to get the most out of bang for your buck weight reduction look no further than the battery offerings of AntiGravity and don’t forget to secure it with a MeLe Design Firm mount!
3 comments
The trunk has a much more hospitable climate than the engine bay for a battery. It’s also easier to hook up amps and inverters from the trunk.
Hi Mike,
What do you think about all the issues surrounding Lithium batteries? This is a replacement so it seems you’re happy enough with the technology and the product, but do you believe there’s a greater risk in using these batteries over lead or agm batteries?
Do you take into consideration that the battery is for more of a track car than a DD? Or that it spends more time in storage vs being driven/outside?
Haven’t had any problems with these. I think the BMS and pouch cells make the difference.