ZOMCHAIN Boat Cleat Open Base Boat Cleat 4/5/6/8 inch, Dock Cleat All 316 Stainless Steel Boat Mooring Accessories, Include Installation Accessories Screws

I have a Shappell JET SLED, made of tough plastic. It floats, but is not a boat. Ice fishermen use them to ferry gear across frozen lakes; I use mine to carry stuff into and out of the woods on snow, ice and even wet grass. But if the load is at all top-heavy, the sled can tip and spill the contents. I wanted a way to lash the sled load securely and recover rapidly. These cleats look like they will do the job.I order four cleats and, like other commentators, found the cleats better than usual quality but found the screws and bolts to be flimsy, possibly of inferior quality metal. So I set out to replace them.The supplied bolts are 4mm in diameter, so ideally I would replace them with 5mm bolts. Unfortunately the holes in the cleats are not big enough to admit that size. I checked with US size bolts and found that my next choice, size 10-24 with a diameter of 4.8mm was a hair too big for the hole, whichI is suspect is about 4.7mm. Unprepared to drill the holes in the cleats a little larger, I finally settled on 8-32 bolts, which are only 5% bigger in diameter at 4.2mm, but the bolts seem to be better quality and stronger.Size 8-32 bolts are widely available in hardware stores, but may be expensive if you have to buy a pack of 60 as I did. From Bolt Depot you can buy any amount at reasonable prices in lengths up to 3.5 inches. You can never have too many bolts.To provide adequate support for the cleats I decided to put four-inch pieces of metal bar stock on the underside of the plastic rails. Ideally one would use stainless steel, but it’s much harder to cut and drill than the aluminum stock I had at hand.Although all the cleats seemed to have the same hole separation, I numbered each cleat and its support piece, just in case. After centering the cleat on the piece of stock, I marked the hole location by passing a 5/32” (4mm) drill bit through the cleat and touching the spinning bit to the stock. After removing the cleat I finished drilling the hole. Then I used the supplied 4mm bolt to position the cleat over the hole and repeated the process for the other hole. After drilling all the holes, I then used a 11/64” (4.4mm) drill bit to enlarge the hole enough for the 8-32 bolts.By placing the metal stock on the underside of the sled it was easy to drill through the plastic with the 11/64” bit and attach the cleats. Because I expect the cleats to take a beating, I used a lock washer and a drop of blue thread locker on the threads.There may be other, cheaper ways of solving my problem, but I like the sleek look of the polished boat cleats. Now if I can only learn how to tie that boat cleat knot on You Tube!

Purchased the 5-inch cleats (pack of 2) for my boat. Came with everything needed to mount. I needed to do bolt through the deck to make sure they were solidly attached instead of using the wood screws. The screws were pretty thin and unfortunately about an inch too short for a 3/4" carpeted deck. Went to a big box hardware store that has a ton of stainless hardware but they did not sell longer screws that were that thin. So had to buy a different type of cleat that had bigger holes where I could use a longer screw. By the way, you won't be able to drill out the holes, it's very hard stainless. Keeping the cleats to use for a lighter duty job, plus I scratched one up trying to drill it out for a bigger screw. Just be cautious buying the 5-inch cleats if you have a standard 3/4-inch deck, with carpet.

These came to with 5 screws and 3 bolts. Needed all 4 bolts to install. E-mailed Customer Service, received a reply by the next day. It seems that maybe there more other packages with the same problem so to get me my needed bolt they send an entire new order. The cleats are not a full 4 inches but very well made, heavy duty. Can't vouch for durability, haven't used them but from appearance they should last a long time. They are on an aluminum boat.

Product is as advertised. I personally thikn they are slightly overpriced, there are other brands for slightly less, but I cannot attest to the other brands quality.These cleats are good quality.Just be sure you know what size you need. the 4" is smaller than you would think, and would not fit my 1/2" or 3/8" dockline. I wound up having to return the cleats, and buy larger 5" cleats.This company was easy to work with on returns.

The edges are pretty sharp. That's not good for rope. They need to be smoother. The included wood screws are too short to really hold well. I had to purchase some other ones. #8 seemed like they'd fit, but didn't. I got some Simpson #7 screws that fit well and are longer at 2.5".

I love these little boat cleats. We use them on a dock on our private pond and they work great. They are very sturdy, installed quickly with the included screws and do exactly what I hoped they would. I'm glad I didn't get something bigger.

Exactly as described. I’m running rope between them and using them as a toilet paper holder in my house on the ocean. They are the perfect size.

I installed these cleats on an aluminum boat, so I had to cut down the screws due to the thin hull. Its a nice looking cleat and it works well.