Slee Battery Tray, torn mount

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neoworm said:
Sorry I didn't take any photos. I was kind of annoyed and just wanted to get it done. Modding stuff I thought I was done with isn't a fun project in my book. :)

I did something similar to spresso where I made individual arms that extend from the bottom of the tray down to existing holes in the top of the fenderwell.

I still use the bolt in the firewall but no longer use the one that also holds the PS resevoir down. (The broken one)
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Thanks but not an option for me as I have no welder. I'll have to get creative unless Slee offers a fix.

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This is the first time we have seen that failure where the nut actually tears out of the body. I am not sure if this is related to people over tightening the hold down bolt and maybe stress the metal around the captured nut, or if there is too much vibration on the tray.

Dan's failure was the actual arm that that cracked and broke off the tray. When that happened we added additional material on the arms of the tray to eliminate the weak point. We have not had that happen again.

The problem is it is not actually the tray failing but the truck. We did not anticipate the inner fender to be that weak. We will look into what can be done to grab extra supports.

We have hundreds of these trays out there, so I am not quite ready to say this is an epidemic. However we will look into this. All we can do is apologize but unfortunately some of these things show up with time only. If we had a 100k mile vibration test facility we could do this testing :D We install the prototypes, then test them and see how they hold up. Then we sell them and sometimes this happens and we have to go back and re-visit.
 
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sleeoffroad said:
This is the first time we have seen that failure where the nut actually tears out of the body. I am not sure if this is related to people over tightening the hold down bolt and maybe stress the metal around the captured nut, or if there is too much vibration on the tray.

Dan's failure was the actual arm that that cracked and broke off the tray. When that happened we added additional material on the arms of the tray to eliminate the weak point. We have not had that happen again.

The problem is it is not actually the tray failing but the truck. We did not anticipate the inner fender to be that weak. We will look into what can be done to grab extra supports.

We have hundreds of these trays out there, so I am not quite ready to say this is an epidemic. However we will look into this. All we can do is apologize but unfortunately some of these things show up with time only. If we had a 100k mile vibration test facility we could do this testing :D We install the prototypes, then test them and see how they hold up. Then we sell them and sometimes this happens and we have to go back and re-visit.
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Christo one thing I noticed when I installed the tray is that there is a bit of twist in it. I had to apply pressure to the mounting tabs to align them to the captured nuts. This puts the whole mount under tension. I can't say that it might contribute to a failure or not but storing energy in the mounting tabs plus the weight of a battery doesn't seem optimum.

In terms of over tightening what is your recommended torque on the 3 fasteners?

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I think Slee's design is okay, the thing that shocked me was how thin the body metal that tore was. I would put the blame there, that is a large pressed piece of sheet metal. Mine could be one that didn't get pressed right. I am not known for over torquing, so don't think that caused it. If Dan's rig had metal as thin as mine it would have ripped out long before this.
 
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Skidoo said:
I think Slee's design is okay, the thing that shocked me was how thin the body metal that tore was. I would put the blame there, that is a large pressed piece of sheet metal. Mine could be one that didn't get pressed right. I am not known for over torquing, so don't think that caused it. If Dan's rig had metal as thin as mine it would have ripped out long before this.
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You cannot blame Toyota for designing a perfectly fine fender. And you can't blame Toyota for a vendor that designs a product that interferes with the original Toyota design.

I think Christo said it best. They tested it and it seemed fine. But in the end there was no long term testing.

I think that is all you can ask of most vendors if your talking about most products. For a an enthusiast forum and for vehicle known for reliability, it's short coming that needs to be dealt with. Hopefully at the vendor level but nonetheless at a customer level.
 
RobRed said:
Christo one thing I noticed when I installed the tray is that there is a bit of twist in it. I had to apply pressure to the mounting tabs to align them to the captured nuts. This puts the whole mount under tension. I can't say that it might contribute to a failure or not but storing energy in the mounting tabs plus the weight of a battery doesn't seem optimum.
Click to expand...

The new trays have two holes where that power steering mount is. There are changes in years, so that takes care that the alignment will work in all trucks.

In terms of over tightening what is your recommended torque on the 3 fasteners?
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I don't have exact specs, I would have to look those up.

We are working on a retrofit additional support that will bolt to the side of the tray and then go down to the fender and grab two extra holes on the fender. That should stop the issue. Will stop the tray from moving and provide extra support.

Catch is that bracket will only work for the last generation trays that have the additional platform on them that was added some time ago. Will keep people posted on when we will have them. Will require some drilling on the battery tray.
 
RobRed said:
I would certainly be interested in the additional support. I purchased my tray about 6 months ago and it has three mounting holes plus the extra platform.

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X2

Installed the tray about a month ago but have waited on battery while watching this thread.

Ken
 
sleeoffroad said:
Just for the record, I think these are isolated cases. We have a lot of these trays out there and I would have seen more issues by now had this been a more common failure.

The support we are making might work for the older trays, but would probably require welding.
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Hey for another data point, I've had your 2nd tray installed for a little over a year now. To be honest I haven't inspected the mounts but my 100 is in your shop today, so go have a look! feel free to install a prototype support if I need it! :D :beer:
 
sleeoffroad said:
We are working on a retrofit additional support that will bolt to the side of the tray and then go down to the fender and grab two extra holes on the fender. That should stop the issue. Will stop the tray from moving and provide extra support.

Catch is that bracket will only work for the last generation trays that have the additional platform on them that was added some time ago. Will keep people posted on when we will have them. Will require some drilling on the battery tray.
Click to expand...

OK, I have tried every angle I can see and can't figure out how this new bracket mounts to the battery tray. Yes, I am apparently an idiot!
Has anyone added this new bracket that has a pic or two of where it goes? I think one picture would go a long way. Or even point out the the holes in the fender this matches up to?
image-2142497118.webp
 
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neoworm said:
So does that mean these are now available?
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Yes, this bracket was included with the tray I received from Slee last week. I emailed Christo and he said this was a new support bracket but the instructions aren't updated yet. I guess I'll give him a call tomorrow to get more direction on how to mount it.
 
We have made a bracket which we include with new tray purchases. We are offering these at $14 including shipping to anyone with an existing battery tray. We have the brackets in stock, but still have to complete the install instructions. It consists of a custom formed, powder coated bracket and hardware. It will require drilling into the original battery tray.

We have looked at the isolated failures and in all cases it was the fender that failed. Based on the number of trays we have sold and the reported failures we don't see this as wide spread. We also have no way to determine if there was any installer error. We always strive to improve our products and this is just such a case where we have revised a design to make it better.

If indeed we had failures on the battery trays themselves we would obviously cover those under our normal warranty. Please contact us via email or phone if you are interested to get one of these brackets.
 
I'm sure these ARE isolated cases, and we certainly bare some responsibility as owners who modify their trucks, and it's no surprise the fender would fail before the heavy steel tray, however it does surprise me that you wouldn't try to get these to customers to protect your reputation. Clearly it's a concern if you are including them in new sales.

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We work hard to maintain our reputation. It is probably the driving force behind most if not all our decisions as well as a fundamental part of our product design. If you have bought any of our products, then we hope you see the extra effort we put in to provide product that is of excellent quality and on a scale of products offered by much bigger companies than ours.

The decision to offer the bracket for sale and not send it out to everyone was not made lightly. We have been selling this tray since 2004. The cases where the vehicle fender failed has been isolated. We design the products as best we can, put them on our trucks and do testing with it. Long term issues will not show up until years into the product's life cycle. When we had issues with the tray initially they were addressed and we replaced the trays for those customers.

Anyone that purchases the product and is not happy with the fit, finish, functionality or design is/was welcome to contact us if they wish to return the product during the return period. Also if we have failures during the warranty period we take care of those.

When we become aware of issues that are related to our products, directly or indirectly, we take them into account and if we have the means, we redesign and improve the product. That is the normal cycle for a lot of products. We do not try to run away, or hide, but there are practical limitations to what we can offer in a situation like this.

How to deal with a situation like this is not the easiest in the book. We want to have excellent products, and as with every product there might be improvements made over the life of the product.

How to deal with existing customers is a big concern for us. That is why we made the bracket in the first place, and now offer it existing customer as a retrofit. We are offering the bracket at a subsidized cost and we will cover the shipping. We felt that it is a very fair solution to offer a upgraded product to existing customers. I have to also point out that then new kits include this bracket, however the cost of the new kit has been increased to cover the cost of the bracket.

We have also decided that if you had a failure in the inner fender mounting point, then we will send you a bracket. Please send us a photo of the damage as well as a mailing address and we will send the bracket free of charge.

I am sorry if this does not please everyone. I would also dearly like to get free exhaust manifolds for every customer that shows up with cracked manifolds, but allas, Toyota won’t do it.
 
staggrlee said:
Christo's reputation is fine in my book, and he sets some pretty high standards for others. I think you're being completely unreasonable.

Products go through revisions all the time, and last I looked I hadn't purchased any sort of future-proofing upgrade policy on my front/rear bumpers, sliders, and yes, battery tray. I haven't received a new dual swing out bumper, redesigned sliders, new battery tray. I had my tray in for two years before doing a custom dual battery box. I had the truck in all kinds of conditions and it hasn't been babied. I see no signs of the kind of issue reported. Should I still get a free upgrade?

He's a addressing a corner case issue with a design/feature update. Bravo for him. Furthermore he's offering a reasonably priced retrofit option to owners of the 1.0 & 1.5 versions -- or whatever you want to call them.

If it were a safety concern I'm willing to bet he'd be offering it for free to anyone experiencing the issue. And he may still choose to do that on a case-by-case basis out of good will. But a blanket free upgrade policy? Really?

A deadbeat would say they haven't and can't test all retrofit options and quality of work and they can only sell you a new tray/support that they have tested. At a small discount -- if you're lucky.

My Android phone is still running Gingerbread which was a forced upgrade from At&t and it's worse than Frodo was, and not as good as the now shipping Ice Cream Sandwich. I won't be getting an ICS upgrade (At&t has deemed my phone incapable of running it well), there are known bugs in what I'm forced to run that are fixed in ICS, and At&t won't support me going back to Frodo. Shouldn't they provide a new free phone upgrade capable of running ICS?
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I didn't ask for anything from Slee. I was assessing the situation. Explain to me again how that's "completely unreasonable"?

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sleeoffroad said:
We work hard to maintain our reputation. It is probably the driving force behind most if not all our decisions as well as a fundamental part of our product design. If you have bought any of our products, then we hope you see the extra effort we put in to provide product that is of excellent quality and on a scale of products offered by much bigger companies than ours.

The decision to offer the bracket for sale and not send it out to everyone was not made lightly. We have been selling this tray since 2004. The cases where the vehicle fender failed has been isolated. We design the products as best we can, put them on our trucks and do testing with it. Long term issues will not show up until years into the product's life cycle. When we had issues with the tray initially they were addressed and we replaced the trays for those customers.

Anyone that purchases the product and is not happy with the fit, finish, functionality or design is/was welcome to contact us if they wish to return the product during the return period. Also if we have failures during the warranty period we take care of those.

When we become aware of issues that are related to our products, directly or indirectly, we take them into account and if we have the means, we redesign and improve the product. That is the normal cycle for a lot of products. We do not try to run away, or hide, but there are practical limitations to what we can offer in a situation like this.

How to deal with a situation like this is not the easiest in the book. We want to have excellent products, and as with every product there might be improvements made over the life of the product.

How to deal with existing customers is a big concern for us. That is why we made the bracket in the first place, and now offer it existing customer as a retrofit. We are offering the bracket at a subsidized cost and we will cover the shipping. We felt that it is a very fair solution to offer a upgraded product to existing customers. I have to also point out that then new kits include this bracket, however the cost of the new kit has been increased to cover the cost of the bracket.

We have also decided that if you had a failure in the inner fender mounting point, then we will send you a bracket. Please send us a photo of the damage as well as a mailing address and we will send the bracket free of charge.

I am sorry if this does not please everyone. I would also dearly like to get free exhaust manifolds for every customer that shows up with cracked manifolds, but allas, Toyota won't do it.
Click to expand...

As a business owner who has had to deal with things of this nature I can certainly understand your explanation and action plan. I think everyone understands the situation and can plan accordingly.

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