Building a Fire Extinguisher bracket

I know a few of you took advantage of Greg G's Halon Fire extinguisher purchase. Now you need somewhere to mount it.

I had mine loose behind the passenger seat. It did a little damage to the back of the seat rubbing against it so I decided it was time to build the 'Charness Harness' for a 308 listed in the technical section.

I couldn't find any local shop who would build the harness for me (too small a project) nor one who would aluminum weld it for me (too small a project). And I've done lots of plumbing sweating pipes, but never "welding" aluminum.

So with this week off, I hit Lowe's & bought the aluminum bar, map gas, and aluminum "solder" from Burnz-o-matic. Total cost < $20. "Welding" is as easy as pie. The bracket is now welded and I'll be cutting/painting is by end-of-day.

So if you have been putting the bracket off & have any experience sweating pipes....JUST DO IT!

 

Ok, I rushed the process a smidge, but it's installed.

Three things I noticed.
1) I should remove more metal near the seat where the bracket mushes the carpet.
2) I'm thinking nobody is going to move the seat forward, so I can shorten the arms & move the extinguisher closer to the seat.
3) The extinguisher I have has the metal strap holding it. I think the bottom of the extinguisher will swing/rub against it's own bracket a bit. So I'll probably have to put some rubber/felt to stop this.

On the plus side, it's very easy to get to.

I'll have a better feel for it over the next couple of days of driving.
Wanna see it? Come out to the Sunday "Over the BS" run. Not to be confused with the "Over the Rainbow" run.


And special thanks to our own Mike Charness for designing & writing up this mount in the Technical section!
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My experience:
1) The extinguisher bracket is 1.5" x 9" as shown below
2) Yep, looks more like 4" before it hits the seat. But you also need space to get your hand at the quick-release which is between the seat & extinguisher so I'm thinking of shortening the arms by 2"
3) I eye-balled the bends. One I got right, the other is slightly raised above the floor. Ooops. When I shorten it I'll try again

4) The rubbing...here's the rub. I goofed. I attached the ext. bracket to the "lower" end of the Charness harness to the bracket sits 1/8 or 1/4" inch below the main arms...forcing the ext. to ride on the harness instead of it's bracket. When I cut the arms, I'll flip the bracket right-side up & that should fix it. BTW: temp fix....use a rubber bicycle patch glued to the harness to stop the rubbing.

Mods: perhaps this needs to be moved to the technical section.
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Ok, with surgical precision (ie hacksaw) the bracket is now 2" shorter.

The quick release is a bit close to the seat, but still workable.
Although I flipped the bracket & don't have the extinguisher/bracket rubbing anymore, the bottom of the extinguisher is still a little loose for my tastes.

Any suggestions to secure it better? maybe a 1/2 retaining clip?
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It's the 2nd part of Murphy's law....

Now that I have it, I'll never need it.

 

It's rivited & won't move