Sudden Stemhead Chainplate Fitting Rust - Time to Worry?

[neilpride]

Looking again at the pics my 2 cents the 2 top bolts are a bit loose and water found a way there, between the plate and the screws, also flat heads screws?? no no, if you have the chance to change it try allen head screws, removing one by one the screws is not hard, slack the backstay a bit to release some tension at the plate and start by the top bolt followed by the next one ,,,, also keep in mind that maybe the caulking at the top is broken so the only way to do it properly is to take the plate apart and start from scracht again... this is usually a 2 to 3 hours job....Cheers,

[Cheechako]

"Hey, guys, stop me if I'm wrong, but I thought the best polishing for Stainless is electro-polishing, done at time of manufacture of the object. And that, after that, the Wichard passivating polish was the best. Has this situation changed? "
Yeah, it's a big bailiwick. I would imagine every company has it's own process. So hard to generalize for sure. I have seen Electropolished lifeline stancions and rails that are a bit dull in appearance and you can still see the scratches on the tubing. Then there's the Wichard Snap shackles that often look like a mirror. I don't think electro bath dip will do that, but who knows.... they may have a process by which they tumble the parts in (unknown) media either after or during the process.
I guess the bottom line is probably the shinier/smoother the better for resistance to attack!

[jkalucki]

Originally Posted by neilpride

Looking again at the pics my 2 cents the 2 top bolts are a bit loose and water found a way there, between the plate and the screws, also flat heads screws??

This is the way J boats does it. Every J109 I've seen has the same flat head screws on the bow chainplate. I bought an enormous flathead screwdriver a year ago, and those screws were quite tight. I'll check them again, maybe they worked loose a bit. Thanks for the idea!

[david samuelson]

Have you checked to see if you've got a stray electrical current?