PRC-174 Battery Box Notes
These boxes were fabricated at a local welding shop who could weld aluminum. After several prototypes, we arrived at a design that accomplished these design goals:
- Weatherproof seal at the top gasket
- Ability to hold 21 D cell battery packs
- Works with both cut down and non-cut down PRC-174’s
- Thin but robust insulating material inside
- Gas vent
- Proper latch tension
- Reasonably good looking finish
If you have more than one PRC-174, pay attention to whether you have a cut down or a non-cut down radio.
“Cut Down” PRC-174 Non-cut Down PRC-174
The edge is prone to breakage, and I suspect Ilan or Tadiran cut down this edge with a dremel tool when it began to break up and look bad.
The reason I bring this up is that if you have a cut down radio, try to keep the same battery box with it so the paint does not get scuffed up. On the original non-cut radios, but box fits up inside the radio on all four sizes. We made this dimension as tight as possible to leave the most room at the mouth to insert battery packs. The trade-off is that it will likely scratch the paint when you take the box on and off. If you keep your boxes separate you won’t see the scratches when they are up inside the radio.
If you need to touch-up the paint on your box, the paint is Rustoleum Camouflage Deep Forest Green #1919, and is available at Home Depot.
The latch handles are pop-riveted on. I am not a big fan of pop rivets, but in order to make the maximum available inside dimensions for the big 21 D-cell battery packs, they had to be used. They are in backwards, again to allow the maximum inside dimensions. If you have a 21 D-cell pack, try to use solder tabs and not wires to keep it as skinny as possible. Getting it through the mouth is the hardest part, but it will fit, and the mouth will flex a little to allow it to get through. If you have thicker wires connecting your pack, and lots of tape, it might be a struggle to get it in. C-cell and 60 AA-cell packs have no problem fitting in.
I hope you enjoy these. I think they are by far the best boxes I have seen for these radios. I suspect they aren’t perfect, but we did the best we could.
If you are unhappy with them, let me know and we will work something out.
My next PRC-174 projects are trying to fabricate a DC power connector using some molex pins and silicone, remote control with a stamp computer using the remote connector (if we can get any) and possibly converting some PRC-77 backpack harnesses for PRC-174 use.
I actually have a VFO optical encoder knob working on a stamp computer, which programs the BCD frequency control lines for the PRC-174. The holdup with this project is of course the connector.
73!
Brian N3OC