Hi folks,
The first part of my build is to deal with the battery situation. The 2013 Flex uses a battery terminal arrangement that makes it very difficult to upgrade the battery at all. I had an Optima Yellowtop in my 2010 Flex so I swapped that to my 2013. Also while in here I installed my HID's and ballasts from my 2010. Here's details in photos -
This is the engine bay for my 2013 Flex. This is the non-Ecoboost engine type
This is why swapping to an Optima or any battery with a different terminal layout is so difficult. This battery terminal is integrated with fuses and such
I pulled the battery out and realized there is some form of amp metering going on with this sensor!
Here it is in my hand
Battery and intake have to come out to make room
This is the factory ground point, the one up top. In this pic I've already unbolted the ground. This is a puny looking ground point IMO.
The pictures don't show what happened next, but I knew I needed to elongate the factory wiring from the fuse box to the battery, and I needed to get a 12v source to my HID relay wiring. So I popped the fuse box halves and separated them, and fed the HID 12v+ lead with ring terminal through the fuse box and up in to the 12v+ tap. While doing this, I pulled the factory wiring from the battery to the fuse box, and found it to be long enough if I tugged on it and rearranged it in the fuse box itself. So once done, it looks like this
I can reach the HID relay fuse right here if I ever need to