Battery Tray

Decided to start on one of the simple items, the battery tray. Like other older airheads this tray is usually rusted at the bottom, acid damage, and the rubber mounts are broken, rusted, or damaged. Mine was all of the above. These trays are over $150 to replace, so care and feeding is necessary. A can of black gloss rustoleum does wonders, after a good sanding.

Once I removed the battery, big heavy Panasonic, does it really need to be this big?

I discovered that to really get the tray out, I need to remove the rear fender, so I started to unbolt the rear fender, well that leads to removing the rear taillight section which is all in all very time consuming. It did allow me to inspect the inside of the rear fender, and clean out underneath. Close examination, I think this fender has been repainted at least once. There are tape lines around the tire information sticker on the top of the fender.

I worked on removing the rusty nuts and rubber vibration dampening mounts, some might be ok, but at least three were damaged beyond use.

Looking online at the BMW parts fiche, they want over $15 a pop, and you need five of them with washers and nuts on both ends.


Hucky's has them for $12.00, but that still seems high.


I searched the Airheads.org archive email list and found a post, Tom Cutter responded two with two sources for replacement parts.

McMaster Carr has these for $6.00 a pop, need to check size, but will save some money.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#4403k722/=28tuoa

From 1976 BMW R75/6