which adhesive?

[Phil L]

I own a remote controlled boat, it's for angling purposes (a baitboat). It's a sealed unit and the battery is inside with no access apart from splitting the boat in two and getting to it that way - the boat is sealed with black silicone. When I bought the thing, the battery was dead and I enquired with the manufacturer as to having it replaced - they wanted £90, but explained that 'the battery was not removable and had to be physically broken up' to replace, so I thought 'f*ok that' and had a bash myself, this was last year and the battery was indeed well glued in place and after much arsing around with stanley blades and umpteen solvents, it eventually came free and was replaced with a shiny new one at the pricely sum of £12.25p. I used araldite two pack adhesive to mould it into the bottom of the boat, which is made of a type of resin, anyhoo the f***er came loose last week in France and was flopping about inside the boat, making it difficult to manouvre, given that it weighs 3kg and it was either on one side or the other and the thing was almost capsized on more than one occasion...the boat is worth around £400, so obviously I'd rather not see it disappear neath the waves, and I have just opened it up and the battery is indeed lying on it's side.

The lifetime of this type of battery is estimated at 2-3 years, and it's a year old now, so obviously it's gonna need changing at some point in the future, so I'm looking for something that will hold it in place (bearing in mind that the boat is carried by the hull, IE, the arse end) so i don't want it to move, but WRT another replacement, I don't want it 'welded' in place neither. Obviously drilling, bolting, screwing et are all out, so what do i use?

This is the boat:

is the battery:

[Tabby]

NT

[Phil L]

there are moving parts inside the boat which this would get in the way of if i was to pack it around the battery

[TMC]

> --

If the battery then you could fit a frame of different material to the boat to hold the battery in place

If the boat then would the same black silicone used to join the boat hold the battery?

Regards

[Phil L]

It's still stuck to the boat - the battery hasn't got a trace on it.

A frame? made from what? - I'm thinking maybe a strap of some kind, maybe velcro type stuff, or a layer of velcro stuck to the boat and the corresponding piece stuck to the battery - it's just that the battery doesn't appear to want to have anything stuck to it for some reason, might have to get the wire brush out....

[pete]

Back to the adhesive question. If the hull material will adhere to it, I'd suggest giving Gorilla Glue a try (or another brand of polyurethane adhesive). Don't use this to glue the battery directly as it's incredibly difficult to remove, if it does stick. But use it to attach a retaining strap or three. It does foam up while curing, so don't glue things too close to parts that should be removable.

[Mark]

The Lidl Battery power pack has a even larger and heaver sealed battery inside, it's held in place with Hot Glue Gun adhesive, What did the original glue that held the battery in place look like.   

[The Natural Philosopher]

I'll second hot glue. We use it all the time on plastic model aircraft. The great thing about it is you CAN get stuff out again, either by pulling, or a hot knife out of a blowtorch flame.

Its my third choice after car body filler, and an angle grinder, as the most useful thing to have handy..:-)

[John Rumm]

of the fast electric boat racers use self adhesive Velcro strips for this sort of thing.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've found Evostick Serious glue sticks most things. Not so hard you can't remove them but well enough. Is particularly good for many soft plastics etc many others won't adhere to. Sticking battery cells direct to plastic would certainly be something I'd use it for. Lidl do a similar stuff too. Only snag is it takes about 24 hours to get to full strength.

[chris French]

I was also going to suggest hot melt glue. Or adhesive velrco to make some straps to hold it in place.

Yup, once I've got the gun hot I'm always looking for things to glue with it :-)

[chris]

Silicone is good hot glue has the merit of easier removal

Chris

[Dave Liquorice]

Does it have to mounted such that it is in one of it's less stable positions? Will it fit with the largest side down instead of one of the smaller ones.

Fixing, few small squirts of expanding foam? Possibly not one of the DIY gap fillers they tend to expand rather a lot and have large voids. You could even make containment system for the foam, wrap the battery in veg oiled cling film and produce a custom sized moulded hole for it.

[David WE Roberts]

If the boat is resin will fibreglass bond to it? You could construct a battery tray from two part resin and matting 'in situ' around a dummy battery covered in cling film and incorporate a couple of metal (stainless?) loops in the tray. This should then allow you to strap the battery firmly in place. I don't know how much space you have in the compartment, but layered matting could provide a large surface area to bond to the hull.

HTH

Dave R

[Tim W]

From the sound of it you may want to use epoxy to fit a piece of timber or ply inside the hull to which you can drill, bolt or screw.

Tim w

[TMC]

I have used both in various pet cage, garden, model and caravan applications using both silicone and black hot melt glue for fixing/joining as well as small pop rivets with a washer on the 'blind' side to stop pull through. You may even find a bit of upvc window section of the right width at the local recycling site

[Mike Clarke]

Could you fabricate some form of strap which you could Araldite to the boat and use to hold the battery down?

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Phil L" saying something like:

[The Natural Philosopher]

If they have to take the boat apart to refit it, I would not be surprised.

[Phil L]

>>> 90quid for that? The utter bastards.

they wanted £50 to replace the battery, and a staggering £20 each way P&P.

The taking apart of the boat is relatively easy, 2 minutes with a sharp knife sees it come cleanly in two peices