howard, the guy at batteries plus felt they would help seeing as how close the batts. were. looked like a good idea. however, i had no idea how tight the fit would be with the larger cells. i realized immediately that i had to remove the white plastic insulators. i also had to get them closer together than the solder strip allowed. i put a crimp in the solder strip until they were mabye .010-015 apart and used a strip of thin plastic to separate them. that was not nearly as difficult as getting enough depth to put the back on. i kept carefully grinding out the back until they barely fit with minimal clearance. i guess i got it right enough since everything is working. i will take more photos and post. peter

p.s. the gel you see in the photo is still there except for what is underneath the cells. i had to take all of that out to get the cells to sit as low as possible.