Originally Posted by
JDMricer
Like they said you'll have to convert to a full size because good luck finding the stock battery anywhere. Not a big deal, I would just pick up an energizer from wal-mart, motomaster from crappy tire, or if you have a membership the kirkland batteries at costco are the cheapest. I know we like to spend big bucks on modding our cars and everything, but spending big bucks on a battery is kinda stupid. Although I can understand why some people want deep cycle batteries, don't be lazy and take it out in the winter to put it on a trickle charger. ANY full size battery is a 10000 times improvement over the stock mini battery. Even my motomaster turns the car over like nothing in comparison to the stock one. Just get the standard size civic battery. They fit fine and you can even still use the stock battery tie downs. You may be able to find a battery that fits better but I had no luck in my search, so here is my guide if you got a civic battery. Its slightly more complex because I think regardless of what you do the negative cable wont be long enough due to the extra height of the civic battery so you'll have to relocate the body bolting point for it.
Luckily for you I just put one in my car like 2 weeks ago so here is a guide on how to do it, I already had removed my spare tire to save the weight plus it is useless for me anyway, you may or may not have to remove it for this-
-Remove the plastic clips that hold the carpet down, be careful with them as they are JUNK, likely they will break even if you are extremely careful.
-Completely unbolt the rear strut bar at the sides, the big things that look like bolts are actually bolts, I think they are a 21mm. In the future you'll be able to just unbolt the passenger side to remove the battery once you get it installed but you'll need to completely remove it now to convert to full size civic battery.
-unbolt terminals and battery tie down (10mm)
-tilt sideways and remove old battery, although I'm not sure if they are supposed to Canadian tire gave me 10 bucks back for my core, so save it.
-I bought bolt on full size terminals from crappy tire. BE CAREFUL with the positive though, it's a bitch but if you can get the stock positive terminal off without actually cutting it off try to do so. Nissan didn't give ANY extra length to work with there. If you gotta cut it which you probably will (I did) just cut off as little as possible.
-Regardless of how little you cut off on the negative it will likely be too short, no big deal you'll just have to change the grounding point on the car for this. The car has a big black metal brace the bolts to the floor and between the strut towers, as you can see the ground cable runs behind this so you do need to remove it. I can't quite remember but I think its 11 different 12mm bolts.
-Once you get off the panel you'll see where the stock negative cable bolts on the body, it is held down by two 10mm bolts.
-I changed the gound point to the top passenger side strut tower, this gave me lots of length to work with and works great. Unbolt the passenger side strut tower brace mount, I think its two 12mm nuts. I only used one of the stock ground cable bolting points but it works fine. You'll have to ream out the hole on the negative cable to get it to fit over the stud on the strut tower.
-once you get the body side of the negative battery cable to fit over that stud just bolt everything back down. Because you spaced out the strut bar mount from the body, you may have to make a SLIGHT adjustment to the strut tower bar to get the large 21mm bolts to both thread back in. I had to do this, you just have to loosen one of the outer nuts at the center of the strut bar and spin that corresponding side of the strut bar counter clockwise to make the strut bar slightly longer. I only turned it one revolution.
hope this helps, it may sound complex but its really not, you'll figure it out as you go.
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