[Justin Stiltner]

Depending on how you look at it, your leads with terminals crimped to the end could be considered a fabricated part, so you would need to not have that on there, but then if you just cut your terminals off, you have modified that lead into a non off the shelf state, so its still fabricated.

Actually if you want to further extend this idea, if your bringing in nuts and bolts, they would need to be separated, no nuts threaded onto bolts, unless you bought them that way.

To me, it sounds like this rule is being enforced a bit too harshly when it forces teams to start doing things like this.

HOWEVER, if you read the rule, and take its literal meaning, then it looks like we have been breaking the rules for a few years now, without realizing it. It is there in black and white, and has been for a few years now. If this is not changed before competition, you could take the leads off your batteries, then at that point the only fabricated parts are the leads for the batteries (you crimped ends on them) so only those would count in the weight, Rather than the whole battery. Also never hurts to check out the connections on your old batteries to make sure they are still good, etc (gotta look on the bright side sometimes)