Assault and Battery

The Milner Coupe carries it's battery under the passenger seat. It hangs under the car in a roughly fabricated carrier and protrudes up through the tool tray. It is open to the elements. If you look under the seat you'll see the top of the battery at floor height with the leads snaking back out under the car.

For our tribute, we felt it was important to keep the battery in the same location, but we were not comfortable having a gaping hole in the floor. We decided to use a battery door similar to a '56 Ford F-100 truck. It would be period correct and allow us to seal out the road noise and dust or water. The F-100 part turned out to be too long to fit in the tool tray properly. We found an earlier Chevy panel van door that worked the same but was shorter in length and fit perfectly. We customized the stock '32 seat frame to accommodate access to the battery by only removing the bottom seat cushion. A & M did a great job and the end product works great and retains the Graffiti look. At the time there were no known pictures of the Coupe's battery from above. We later discovered that we had cut the seat frame almost exactly the same. Of course the Coupe's a tad rougher in the finish.

As is always the case with this project, one solution leads to even more problems. By installing the battery door, we had reduced the height of the battery compartment. A standard battery would no longer fit. Not a big deal, use a smaller Ultima battery. They last longer, are safer and have more cranking power. But this is the Milner Coupe! No deviations! Back in line! Stop doing it right!

Now, depending on who you talk to, the challenges of this build have either increased the size of my Medula Oblongata to humongous proportions enabling ingenious thought Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking could only aspire to.

Or.........

In the last four years I have been reduced to a drooling, blathering imbecile with no capacity for reason or common sense.

Either way (let me pause to wipe the drool) we came up with a solution.

You decide.