Hi, I'm Greg with Bennington Marine. Today I'm here at the plant, we're going to be talking about the Benni Clip.
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The Benni Clip is a great way to install and remove your boat fender that protects your boat when it's at the dock. Now this is something you can do on your own or you can have your dealer install these for you. The tools needed for this installation are pretty simple. We need a cordless drill, this is a number 11 drill bit, pencil to mark where you're going to drill, and then a rivet gun. Obviously you can see this one's pretty fancy, you could also use a hand gun as well.
We're going to need a couple safety PPE, you want to protect your eyes from any metal shavings. And then the gloves as well to keep yourself from getting hurt. The Benni clips come in packages of 4 or 6, you can get them in the gray or the black for the blackout rail application. The first part we'll talk about is the actual fender clip itself. We also have the fender post as you see there that'll mount to the rail. The rivet is what's used to mount it to the rail.
And then certain applications will have to use the Benni or the post base. So as far as clip location, on this particular boat being a 21 footer, we're going to put three clips down each side. If you have a larger boat, you may use four clips down each side. Our front location we want to put just behind the forward radius, so we're going to put our clip right up in here. So we want to mark a little spot there.
And then just between the two forward Bimini brackets would be my next location. And then right towards the back of the boat and forward of this clip here is where I'm going to put it. Now do keep in mind, if you have a gas fill or say you have a snap for cover, you don't want to line up with those because we don't want to block those. We want it to lay nice and flat down on the side of the boat.
OK. For standard rail, you're going to use the post and it's going to mount directly to the rail. And keep in mind we still have the base plate but that application is only used for the radius tubing boats which are generally going to be on your RX, your Q, and your QX series. So when you have the radius railing like this, you're going to use your post plate and see how that gets up there nice and even.
And there is a hole in there, so that's going to help you with the location and then your post will go right on the top. So once you have your hole pre-drilled, you'll install it with your rivet going right down through both pieces. We're going to start on the front part of the boat. We're going to go right behind that radius like we talked about earlier.
And we're just going to measure 5/8 inch in, make our mark, there. We just don't want to hit the vinyl with the drill bit when we come out. Remember only drill through the top portion of the tubing, not through the bottom part. Go ahead and install our post. Best way to do is get your rivet through the post, line it up, get it there tight. Again, we have the fancy rivet gun.
I'm going to put that down, make sure it's snug. And that portion is installed. Now that we have our post installed, we're going to go ahead and install the clip. And then we'll get our rope and fender and make those adjustments. We're going to go ahead and install our fender and rope onto the clip. We're just going to bring the rope right out from the bottom. We're going to find where we want it on our deck trim, so about halfway on the deck trim.
We're just going to pinch that, throw in a half, and one more. And you're going to notice you have some excess rope. So remember this is braided rope, so you can cut it and make it shorter. Just remember to melt the end of the rope so it doesn't try to fray from you. Nice thing is once you have it adjusted, it just makes for easy removal as you pull away from the dock. And then as you return, you can install it before you get back to the dock. For more tips like this, head to benningtonmarine.com.
