Hello, John Talley here with Boats.net. Today we're going to spend the little
time talking about a boat owners arch-enemy,
and what is that? Of course corrosion-- what types are there and what can we do
to maintain it or prevent it from happening on our boats. The first form of
corrosion is the simplest, and this what most people call it a simple corrosion.
As you know you put something in water like a piece of steel and you lay it out
in the air, well guess what? It starts to rust and that is a form of corrosion.
Yamaha has a great lineup of products used to prevent just simple corrosion.
Starts with just keeping it clean, then you want to protect it with a silicone
spray. Now if you're setting it up for long-term storage, well that's when you
spray on the inside. Now if you're dealing with a fuel injection system,
well they've got that covered as well. Now the way you want to approach this,
each time you take your boat out, when you bring it back home, of course you want
to flush out that engine. Thoroughly, At that point, spray it down with this
cleaner and then finish it off by spraying it down with the silicone, which
basically encapsulates all the different exposed parts of the engine and keeps
them from rusting. Now if you're going to store it for a long term, either you need
to use the fogging spray, or if it's a fuel injection model then you use the
fogging oil. The second form of corrosion is probably the most common. It's called
galvanic corrosion. In that particular scenario, what you have are two
dissimilar metals either touching or in close proximity in some type of an
electrolyte. And in this case, we're talking about water. What makes it even
worse is if it's in salt water. So how do you combat that when you've got a
stainless steel output shaft connected to a bronze propeller? Well you give it
something a little bit softer to go after instead of that bronze propeller
which actually makes your boat move, and those are called sacrificial anodes. They
are physically connected to the boat in various areas. They can be on the out
drive, they can actually be only engine itself. Anything that comes into contact
with water, you're typically going to find an anode. Now it's going to be very
important for you to know the location of each one of the anodes on your
particular motor, because just because you see the ones down at the bottom
there may be more that are hidden under that engine cover. It's important to make
sure that they're all functioning, otherwise, well it's going to
attack the engine instead and we don't want that to happen. Now as you can tell
by this lower unit, they had it tilted up and there's a nice even water line
where this part was down in the water, the anode was up here in the air, so what
did it go after? Went after the lower part of that drive Now, aside of making
sure that your anodes are in good shape, you also want to make sure that your
boat is properly bonded together. When I say bonded, I'm talking about your
different electrical and/or mechanical aspects of the boat. They need
a common thread to keep them at the same potential difference otherwise you can
run into that same galvanic type scenario where you've got this one at a
higher potential than this one and then of course it's going to eat it alive. One
of the best systems out there is actually the Mercathode system by
Mercury / Mercruiser. And what it is it is a solid state system that is actually
operating off of your most 12-volt battery. And it is integrated into the
engine / out drive of the boat. And what it does, it actually produces a reverse
current that shields off the galvanic type current that's trying to attack the
metals of the engine. That's a pretty neat system, but you need to get it
tested annually because there's no way for you to look at it and go, hey, that's
working. If just one wire is broken or one strap is disconnected, the Mercathode
system will not work, and I know firsthand just how destructive and that
can be. Now as you can see from these pictures, this was not an easy process. It
had to go through a cleaning, priming, and then painting procedure that was
multi-layered. It took quite a bit of time. Unfortunately, I could not save the
gimbal housing and it had to be replaced. It was just too far gone for me to
straighten it out. The last type of corrosion I want to discuss is actually
what they call stray current, and that is caused when there's an electrical issue
either at the dock or potentially on their own boat. The most destructive of
those is going to be on the DC side if anything. Picture if you will, you've
got your wiring going through your bilge and it's making a connection to the
bilge pump. If you just used a regular connector that's laying in water where
it's got a pathway to go from your bilge all the way out through your
engine, because it's looking for a ground which is the water that your boat is
sitting in. The best way to prevent that type of scenario is to make sure that
all your connections are actually watertight. Do every single connection on
your boat as if it's going to be placed under water. That is my rule of thumb. Now
there are instances where your boat is doing exactly what it's supposed to, but
the dock is not and you could be getting stray current back to your drive through
the actual shore power system. Now to combat this, what I would recommend you
install on your boat what they call a galvanic isolator. It actually is inline
on your AC side on the ground, which is actually incoming from the shore power.
That effectively will block any type of current that's trying to travel through
the dock out to your boat and then into the water. Cheap insurance and believe me,
if you don't have it in place it can eat that out drive alive just like that. So
where does that leave us on the entire global topic of corrosion?
Well prevention is worth a pound of cure. I guarantee you at least do the simplest
thing, make sure it's clean. Make sure it's sprayed down to keep your simple
corrosion at a minimum. At best each time you run your boat, before or after, check
all your anodes just put your eyes on. Take a look at your drive. Make sure
you're not starting to get any type of bubbling up with the paint anywhere. If
you catch it really early you can correct it much cheaper than if it eats
the drive alive. Well listen, if you need any parts, maintenance pieces, sprays,
lubricant, for your boat, why don't you come see us at Boats.net
and we can get you taken care of. Have any questions or comments, or if
there's another topic that you'd like me to cover, why don't you leave them in the
section below and I'll do my best to answer them and/or do a video about it.
Listen we just want to say thank you for shopping here with us at boats.net and
we will see you in the next video. Have a great day.