Hooking up the battery

So I took to the battery cables today to try and lengthen them a bit. For this I would recommend you have all the right tools. This means wire strippers, soldering iron and heatshrink so you don't create a short.

All the bits

Hmm...decisions decisions.
For this little hack I went for standard  aluminium wire...same stuff that I found inside the batteries wire

Here's the connector with the new wire extensions attached and heatshrinked. That little section of heatshrink you can see on the rightmost wire is there to identify it as "pin 1". Without it there is no way to know which way the connector connects and who knows what would happen there.

Here's the wires being attached to the battery one by one. The battery is being held (loosely but not too loosely) in a clamp while everything is hooked up

Perfect - the battery sits in place nicely and the connector reaches without too much slack. Here you can see power connected up and charging the battery. It also still boots off battery so that means I got it all hooked back together properly :)

Here's a closeup of the wire extension connected to the motherboard. The black tape is there just to keep the wires bunched and protect the motherboard somewhat.

Sorry for all the "crappy" photos that I've taken along the way. The only camera I take with me all the time is my iPhone 3G. I do have a dSLR but it's a bit bulky to be carting around the place all the time. I 'would' have an iPhone 4 (been hanging out to get one) but so far there is a 4-5 week wait and most places have stopped taking names anyway.

Ah well....all in good time I guess :)