[1971_c10]

Hey man, I generally agree with what they guy wrote that you referenced. For those that want the synopsis, the guy is talking about the axle split, not to be confused with the weight split even though he refers to it as 52% weight on the front left. He really means 52% of the front axle's weight on the left side and 52% of the rear axle's weight on the left side.

His main point is that you want the cross weights to be the same. So FL/RR to FR/RL should be equal. Most scales these days will give you cross weights in addition to corner weights. This helps to keep the car balanced in both turning directions, so applicable for any handling situation, be it auto-cross, road coarse, mountain fun, etc. The left turn only boys bias this to help the car turn left only, in addition to some other tricks like wheel base (e.g. sprint cars, modifieds).

For the battery, it all depends. The battery is a fraction of your weight, well at least my weight. I'm a tad over 200 lbs. So if you treat the battery like ballast, then you could do some iterations on the scales to find the best place. Essentially, have a helper set the battery in various locations with you in the truck and see how things change. You may find the driver side rear is best, you may find right behind the driver best. Without scales to optimize, it's probably more personal preference. I'm not sure we'd see the benefit of the optimized location just because our trucks are over 3000 lb, some well over.

I have thought about behind the tire, either side. The catch there is you would want a pretty stout box to put the battery inside. That area will get beat to crap with pebbles from street driving. Maybe if it's a low milage/year truck you wouldn't need as much armor. But my goal is to make the truck so fun to drive I put more than the usually 2000 miles on it per year.

With a raised floor, you actually get quite a bit of room up near the front bed mounts between the floor and the top of the frame rail before it turns up for the axle notch. It's around 4 inches lower than the rear frame rail section behind the notch. With the simulated raised floor I did, there was around 11" vertical space in there. Enough to almost mount the battery "normal" versus on it's side. That's the custom cross-member with an integrated battery box I'm talking about. Tied in with the 2nd cross member from the front of the bed. That cross member is no longer much use to the bed mount since the floor is up 6", so there is opportunity there to optimize. My neighbor even joked about putting a live well box in that space if I did a full tilt floor.