How to mount/secure a battery

security6

Petty Officer 2nd Class
Joined
Jul 21, 2008
Messages
191
I'm getting my new (to me) boat ready for the water. I checked the batteries and noticed that 3 of my batteries (boat has 4) are not secured. Each battery does have a black plastic battery box with a lid, but the boxes are not secured. In other words, the batteries/battery boxes are free to slide around the engine compartment. That doesn't seem quite right to me. I looked around in there, but didn't see any points where one would attach a battery.

How do you mount/secure a battery/battery box in the engine compartment? What sort of hardware is normally used?

Thanks!

Additional background info:
Boat is a Larson Escape deckboat. The engine compartment is big. The boat has a 350 v-8 in it, and there is a platform on each side of the motor that is about 2'x3'. The boat has 4 batteries. Three of them are in the engine compartment, and one of them is in the under-bench seat storage area.
 

PeteyDaMan

Seaman
Joined
Jun 30, 2009
Messages
51
Re: How to mount/secure a battery

Hey do some comparison shopping here is another reason iboats blows away the competitor .........

http://www.iboats.com/Marine-Batter...6289471--**********.805894653--view_id.216581

I hate to see new boater's who have been hoodwinked by other companies! A certain company mentioned above can not hold a candle to iboats!

I would normally link to an iboats product, if they carried it. The ones shown in this link have plastic hold down rods as opposed to stainless in the one I posted. I had the plastic ones orriginally and replaced them with the sturdier stainless models but it's your money, decide for yourself.
 

Pez Vela

Chief Petty Officer
Joined
Dec 4, 2004
Messages
504
Re: How to mount/secure a battery

Now that you've got two good options, use caution in the installation process. This is a true story, and I'm not making this up. A trailer boater brought his rig into a dealer to add a battery. He picked his boat up when the job was completed and headed to the ramp to launch his boat. No matter how far he backed his rig into the water, the boat would not float off. On closer inspection, out of the water, he discovered that the rigger had used "bigger is better" screws that had penetrated the hull and gone into the wood trailer bunks.
 

security6

Petty Officer 2nd Class
Joined
Jul 21, 2008
Messages
191
Re: How to mount/secure a battery

Thanks for all the quick responses.

Looks like there are two schools of thought then:

1) mount the battery box directly to the hull
2) mount strap-mounts to the hull, and then use a strap to secure the battery box to the strap-mounts.

Now that I have some idea of what they even look like, I will take a closer look to see what is in there. I suspect that the previous owner just secured the battery box directly to the hull because the battery box had a small (3/8" long) screw poking out the bottom of it. To be perfectly honest I thought that is what he had done, but the screw seemed way too small to hold the battery in place. Perhaps that is why the battery boxes are now loose.

A few follow-up questions:

1) How big do the screws need to be to secure the battery? The screws will be inserted into fiberglass.
2) Assuming the screws do not come with a kit, are wood screws recommended?
3) Is it best to mount the batteries as far back in the corner (starboard-stern corner and port-stern corner) as possible?
 

H20Rat

Vice Admiral
Joined
Mar 8, 2009
Messages
5,199
Re: How to mount/secure a battery

3) Is it best to mount the batteries as far back in the corner (starboard-stern corner and port-stern corner) as possible?

That is entirely boat/load dependent. Some boats you might want them mounted in the bow! If you adding a second battery I would do center mount, or towards the opposite side a little bit. First reaction would be to put it on the opposite side to balance it, but the boat was already designed with a heavy battery on one side, so you don't want to try and counterbalance what was designed for. (in my boat, oil tank is on one side, battery on the other)
 
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