My boat has a pair of battery trays in the center console to hold the two deep-cycle trolling motor batteries. I took the old batteries out awhile back, and noticed that the screws holding the trays in are nothing but clumps of rust.

This weekend, I plan to remove the trays and replace the screws.

I hope they don't have a bolt on the underside, as I'm not sure how the heck I could get that far under the deck to deal with those.

My plan is to drill out the existing rust lumps that used to be screws with a very small drill bit, then remove and replace the battery trays. I suspect these screws WERE stainless, but the acid from the batteries and air inside the center console got to them.

Anyone have a recommendation of better materials to use when replacing these? Is there anything better than stainless steel screws that I could use? I'd like to avoid this corrosion issue in the future.

some sort of epoxy would be less likely to corrode than the stainless. I would seriously consider a gel cell or dry cell battery. IF they are in a closed compartment where you can not monotor them, I would go with something like an Optima, something that does not leak acid.
Good luck

I can view and access the batteries easily enough; they are just in the middle of my center console storage space. I'd like Optimas, but they are way outside of my price range at this time. I'll probably have to go with the Academy batteries.

I never actually saw any acid leaks from the two nice Exides that were under the console; just guessing that the fumes or something over the years might have corroded those screws. The batteries themselves looked spotless ... which figures. They were drained once and left to sit for 6 years along with the rest of this boat.