During winter maintenance I was checking out my Gil Classic Offshore battery hold-downs (3 of them) and found that the black plastic finish was cracked and peeling away over 95% of the lower plate surface. There was about 1/8 to 1/4 inch of whitish material build-up on most of the exposed surface. After removing the cracked and flaking finish and scraping/sanding off the white-stuff I find significant amount of pitting in the metal itself. According to the Gil web site, it sounds like these hold-downs were supposed to be designed so that all of this never happened to begin with. My boat is 10 yrs old and I do not know if these are OEM or not. Anyone have any ideas on this? Is there a hold down that will survive in the marine environment? Is my experience with these hold downs typical?

I plan on smoothing them down, painting them and putting them back.

10 years of use and brackets are savagable I think problem is probably not the brackets. Powder coat your brackets rather than paint it is not to expensive and I think you would be happier. Only way I know to keep corrision down is to do regular maintenance on batteries including cleaning brackets with baking soda. I have not ran dry or gel batteries they may be better for corrsion but would be more $$$. Maybe we will get some better ideas from the vets on this site!

It sounds like neglect to me (sorry) when and if you wash out your bilge I would give the batteries a shot of fresh water to wash away any corrosive stuff that may be starting to form. I had the Gill plastic offshore brackets and found them to be junk. IF you have them too tight or loose they will break. I came up with a solution to this problem I through them out and bought the Optima anodized mounts from Eddie Marine these are high quality mounts that impressed me for the price. I will now have Blue Optima batteries in a red anodized mount that will color key to the hp500's No corrosion and no broken mounts. Total investment just under 500.00 for the batt's and bracket and worth every penny. Scott

I know you don't have the plastic mounts and can easily repair the ones you have I just posted my findings for the guys that have had trouble with the plastic units. I also think you can buy some type of spray for shooting the crud off your batteries and keeping the acid nuetralized or use baking soda and water. Scott

[ 02-10-2002: Message edited by: Scott ]

[ 02-10-2002: Message edited by: Scott ]