Battery tie down, Motor mount ( 97 speedster )

[RiverRat928]

( SORRY for long post, thanks for thoughts and opinions)

I recently bought a 97 speedster. I have run it about 7 hours since I purchased it. I had it out a week ago and finally got to see what it was capable of ( took it out by myself, without the wife and daughter ). I did a few high speed turns and spins ( WOW so much Fun !) and hit a few big boat wakes ( hard landing... ). I got back after dark and put boat in garage without inspecting the engine compartment. I then left for a week of work out of town. I returned today and found that the battery tie down had come loose (possibly broken), and the battery was laying on its side. It leaked battery acid all over the fiberglass and stained it rust color. I pulled the battery and put baking soda all over the spill, and rinsed out the inside of the hull really well. The fiberglass is stained but doesn't feel soft or flaky.

Has anyone else experienced this?
Is there anything else I should do to clean or seal the fiberglass ? Should I be concerned about long term damage? ( weakend glass )
Has anyone come up with a better way to tie down battery ?

The battery was only a year old and WAS in good shape, two cells are dry and the other 4 are three quarters full, can I salvage the battery by filling with distilled water? or should I plan to replace (maybe AGM to avoid this again)

I also found that the starboard side motor is loose, I found this by tugging on the exhaust pipe ( a suggestion I found on this forum..... thanks). I know it was not loose prior to the last run. The base plate mounted to the rubber isolators is still intact on all four corners. It looks like engine is loose from base plate, how do I fix this ?

 

[Sportster-2001-951C-Stock]

Need to diagnose exactly what's broken on the motor mount, might have to remove the motor if the anchor to the hull is pulled lose, cut away any lose stuff and epoxy/glass in a new block or simply replace the broken motor mount.

I would strongly consider renting or purchasing the engine alignment fixture if there's any chance the engine position has changed from the repair (quite likely).

The battery acid won't damage your fiberglass but it could corrode metallic hardware so rinse and neutralize using baking soda as you've done. A bottle of orange or that purple grease cutter and cleaner can help while swabbing the bilge clean.

Normally for making a battery tie-down block I like to epoxy a wooden block covered in fiberglass woven cloth and epoxy resin to seal the block of wood. A quart should do the trick for glassing the piece of wood then the remainder make a peanut butter consistency paste by mixing the activated with sawdust. Then once cured to make it pretty, paint over using epoxy paint.

So in case you need to rebuild the motor mount I guess you'll need a total 2 quarts of epoxy resin and one quart of activator, a rattle can of epoxy paint and some DRY wood pieces.

The battery cannot be replenished with water but you can probably recover by refilling it with acid solution from an autoparts store (They usually only have the acid solution for watering dry-stored batteries but maybe... NAPA?).

 

[RiverRat928]

Thanks Sporster,

I pulled the engine compartment cover off today and got the bilge scrubbed pretty good with superclean. It looks like the tabs are ok on the battery tray, im going to try it out one more time before modifying tray, im hoping the tie down was just loose, I never checked it after purchase. I will be sure to look at battery after run.

As for the engine mounts, I found that the nuts came off 2 of the 4 studs (studs on bottom of engine block) that go thru the cradle base plate. I believe that the rubber mounts are still ok and intact.
It doesn't look like I can put them back on without pulling the motor. Not too excited about that.

Going to download shop manual from this site and give it go. Wish me luck

 

[Premix]

As for the engine mounts, I found that the nuts came off 2 of the 4 studs (studs on bottom of engine block) that go thru the cradle base plate. I believe that the rubber mounts are still ok and intact.

You're going to need an alignment tool to complete this work.

I also recommend you lay the steel engine plate on your four rubber mounts without the engine on it to see if any one corner sticks way up, indicating the plate is bent out of shape. You can bend it back, but realize any fine adjustments can be made with shims.