Electro Eliminator.

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runner911

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Suffered quite badly this year with the anodes on my Merry Fisher 655 fizzing off in a few months as a result of which the engine and prop. shaft water intakes "de-zincified" and will have to be replaced.
I will be bonding all the new skin fittings ( bronze as opposed to brass ) and valves to the main anode on the transom of the boat.
However I am having another large anode fitted on the bottom of the boat near the prop.shaft with a view to running an earth wire from the anode up to an Electro Eliminator marketed by MG Duff. The kit has arrived , but I can't see how I can fit it anywhere so that the brushes rest on the prop shaft inside the boat near the gearbox.
Anyone ever fitted such a device ? If so , did you have to make up some sort of frame to support the arms of the brushes ?
 
Generally French boats are fitted with Brass skin fittings and valves, replace all.

Either or all , bond engine , gearbox and shaft and check continuity or fit shaft electro eliminator or fit shaft anode or all. Persinally i do all.
 
The brush holder is designed to slip over one of the studs on the stern tube packing gland- the hole at the pivot point, bottom of the "Vee" if you open out the legs against the springs.
This assumes you have a packing gland, and that one of the studs is 3/8 or 10mm (from memory!) in diameter, if not you may have to get one specially machined to suit.
If you do not have a packing gland, you will have to fabricate a bracket, it will be easier at the stern tube end, 'cos you do not have the coupling in the way.

edit
if you have the smaller version, less than 2" shaft, a pic is worth a thousand etc...

https://www.google.co.uk/search?num...w&biw=1132&bih=666&sei=Hs7gUJHbG8jL0AWKsoHQAg
 
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It is not now considered that bronze or DZR skin fittings etc should be bonded to the anodes.
They are resistant to corrosion and do not require the protection of anodes

In fact one of the recommendations of the MAIB in the investigation into the near loss of the FV Random Harvest a few years ago was that the skin fittings should be disconnected from the anodes.

If your anodes are "fizzing off" in a few months you should investigate the reason. Having skin fittings connected to them wont have helped but their loss in a few months must be due to a more serious reason.

Do you have shorepower? If so do you leave it connected? If so do you have a galvanic isolator in the system?
 
they are simple to fit- you should have a plastic tongue that holds the brushes- this needs to be fitted with Stainless Steel jubilee clips around the housing- the brushes widen and sit on the shaft and the wire goes to ( in my case) the transom anode. hope thats clear.
 
Mike k said:
they are simple to fit- you should have a plastic tongue that holds the brushes- this needs to be fitted with Stainless Steel jubilee clips around the housing- the brushes widen and sit on the shaft and the wire goes to ( in my case) the transom anode. hope thats clear.
Click to expand...

I found this did not hold the plastic strip rigidly enough and had to make another bracket to hold the plastic strip about half way along.
 
The electro eliminator will not do anything for your skin fittings. Its purpose is to bond the anode to the prop and shaft. It is the prop that needs protecting, which can be done by using a prop anode on the end of the nut, or a shaft anode. However, these are often small and in your case there is no space to fit a shaft anode. So using a hull mounted anode is the preferred method - but you need to bond it to the prop. The normal way of doing this is to bond it to the gearbox which is connected to the shaft, but if you have a flexible coupling you need to bridge that. The electro eliminator is an alternative, but is not suitable for all boats because of space issues or difficulty of attachment.

The failure of your skin fittings is more likely because they are brass, not because of lack on anode protection. It is not normal to bond skin fittings if they are DZR as they are resistant to dezincification and as they are not in contact with other metals will not become part of a galvanic cell. As Vics says you may well also have issues with shorepower, so a galvanic isolator in the shorepower circuit would be a good idea.
 
A lot of French manufacturers and other european manufacturers use brass its a fact.

Look for red valve handles almost definitely indicate brass valves.

If it is marked with CW617N it is brass.
 
Bandit said:
A lot of French manufacturers and other european manufacturers use brass its a fact.

Look for red valve handles almost definitely indicate brass valves.

If it is marked with CW617N it is brass.
Click to expand...


My boats fittings have red handles and they are not brass I checked, and its a French production boat from 2009 so at least in my case these generalisations are incorrect.

So before you all panic have a look at the fittings first as that's the only real way to check. Personally if I ever found one I would replace it with Marelon, my seacock for the sea toilet outlet is Marelon type and seems to be well made.
 
We have the same boat as you and have found that tha bulkhead above the shaft and the Volvo lip seal make the room to fit the Electro Eliminator to tight , we ended up running a wire from the fuel filter which is bonded , with a croc clip connect it to the coupling bolts , it is a pain taking it on and off every time but I could not see anyway around it.
We have added 2 disc anodes to the rudder which is bonded and a bar anode to the skeg which is not bonded , the rudder anode wears about 80% , the prop anod wears about 90% , the skeg anode wears about 20% and the main transom one wears about 40% in the year which is a lot better then they used to wear.
On our boat from new the skin fittings on the engine intake plus the shaft intake are DZR but the seacocks are brass.
 
runner911 said:
Anyone ever fitted such a device ? If so , did you have to make up some sort of frame to support the arms of the brushes ?
Click to expand...

No idea on your engine bay lay out, but I fitted an EE to my Bene 473. No way to fit it as suggested by McDuff. I fabricated a bracket which could be fitted to a fore and aft bulkhead in the engine bay, such that the arm of the bracket extended athwartships over the prop shaft. I slotted the fixing holes at the bulkhead end of the bracket so I could adjust the height, and also slotted the end of the bracket over the shaft. The EE was fixed to a piece of flat bar and bolted to the underside of the bracket, the slots allowed the flatbar and EE to be adjusted to the correct position over the shaft. Been there a year now, not fallen off (yet)
 
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