Thread: Battery Tray
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Edward Greeley
 
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Good evening, Ari,

Are you speaking of a "tray", as intended to hold one battery, or a
"shelf" on which the tray (or trays if you have multiple batteries)
would sit? I have a '79 Chris Craft Catalina 280 and your description of
the problem sounds like mine. My boat has what I call a "shelf" that is
about 20 inches wide by about 4 feet long that is also of painted
plywood, resting on one of the longitudinal stringers and fastened to
the inside of the hull with FG roving. The years of water dribbling
through the engine hatch, plus the boiled-over battery acid have made
much of the plywood shelf disintegrate as you described.

So what do I plan to do about the problem? When the weather cools a bit
(90-97 deg. F. here every day; not fun working under the cockpit sole in
the bilge!) I plan to cut out whats left of my shelf, grind off the
roving that attaches it to the hull side, grind off the underside ply if
it is glued to the stringer, then replace the shelf with a piece of 3/4
inch FIR (not pine!) plywood which I will have totally encased with
epoxy laminated FG before installation. I will secure the new shelf to
the hull side with roving, or four or five plies of wide FG tape, as the
original shelf was. I will probably also use a piece of FG tape and
epoxy to secure the shelf to the stringer regardless of whether the
original was glued to the stringer or not.

This may sound to some like overkill, but it's the only way I see to
cure the problem permanently since the engine hatch DOES leak, and the
batteries DO have a way of dribbling acid down themselves. Can't afford
those fancy, sealed and/or gelled batts!

Ed Greeley

aroostifer wrote:

Hey,

Thanks to the group for advice on my last post about my propane sniffer
meltdown. Sniffer is now replaced, remounted, rewired (with fuse.)

On to the next project: My 1978 Catalina 30 has a painted wood battery
tray which is basically crumbling with wet rot.

The way I figure it, I can either:

1) Use the drill and fill method to saturate it with epoxy and maybe
glass over it.

Pros: pretty easy

Cons: I'll never get the "wood" (more like wood-chowder at this point)
dry, it will eventually just rot again

2) Build a new battery tray out of Starboard

Pros: easy to build, rot/corrosion/proof

Cons: old wood is bonded to raised fiberglass area on the bottom of the
hull. would need to rip that out and figure out a way to fasten the
Starboard to the fiberglass (maybe SS bolts epoxied in place?) Plus
Starboard is expensive. (But I've already got a big sheet of it laying
around, so not a big deal.

3) Build a new battery tray out of epoxy coated marine ply

Pros: Will bond nicely to the fiberglass. With proper care, I can make
it rotproof.

Cons: Bigger pain in the butt to assemble, coat, etc.


What do y'all think? Any other options?

- Ari