W108 Battery Tray

[alabbasi]

On my fairly rust free W108, I am in need of a battery tray, is there an aftermarket seller that makes these or are they dealer only items?

[Tomguy]

Ironically, my heavily rusted 108 has a good tray. Go figure!

I see them pop up on eBay often. Get a good used one, wire brush it, sand it, and paint it a nice gloss black. I did that with mine and it looks great.

[alabbasi]

The dealer wants $180.00 dollars for a new one... good news is that the part is number starts with 115 so it should be interchangable with the W114/W115 models. I guess I am going back to the junk yard this weekend with a hack saw.

[Tomguy]

Wait a sec... hacksaw? The battery tray is removable by undoing 3 bolts and 1 phillips screw... Don't hack one out!

[alabbasi]

Thanks for that, I will put the hack saw away .

[mzsmbs]

hey, is there a battery hold down with those? mine doesn't have one.

[Tomguy]

I don't think there's a holddown, but I could be wrong. I've never seen pics of one. There is a bracket in the rear of the tray that serves two purposes: To keep the battery from sliding front-to-back, and to hold the rear of the tray down. Despite my driving, the battery has never shifted in the tray. It's quite heavy and I think its own weight keeps it in place (the bracket is a little too far back to hold my battery down, and I got a HUGE one that was listed as correct for the car, it seems to fit perfectly).

Al: Here's a pic I found. A bit old but I think it came out nicely. If I didn't fool around with stuff in my engine bay so much (including battery removal/reinstallation at least 10 times since) it'd still look like this. It's got some nicks now.

[Gregg Bambo Jr.]

If you are not a purist, just get an aftermarket battery tray and relocate it to the trunk. This way you'll have easier access to your engine for maintenance without that large battery blocking one side of the engine.

[Mark DiSilvestro]

Fintails and early W108s had a rectangular frame that sat on top of the battery and secured it to the tray with a pair of 'J' bolts. That frame also had a pair of ears to hang the washer bottle. Don't know what the later W108s had, but the W114/W115 tray is much longer and, instead of a frame and 'J' bolts, it uses a lip that secures the bottom rear of the battery and a speed-nut for a bolt-on clip to secure the bottom front. That tray has 2 or 3 holes for the clip's speed-nut, depending on if you need to secure a diesel sized battery or a shorter one for the gas version.

Happy Motoring, Mark

[Idle]

I pulled one of these recently. Actually last year sometime.

A 220d, 1971. There was one ten mm bolt at one end, the end nearest the brake booster. It is in a bit of an attachment on the tray and not through the tray.

There is a tack weld to the body near the other end, next to the fender. A good tug will break this free.

But before tugging there is an arm off of the tray that is welded to the radiator support frame. This has to be cut out. Then give the tray a tug to break the tack weld. (NOTE: I removed the radiator before cutting this out. No need to take any chances with the oil cool being right there.)

And it all came out in one piece! I dropped it into my existing tray and bolted it down/soit welded it in place. I could have drilled a hole and mounted the welded spots that way, too. There was no need to remove my existing tray since the 'new' one covered the old one nicely after a bit of wire brush work on the old one.

[Rook]

Here’s a photo of the hold down with ears for the window washer bag on my ‘69 280S.