I dont think it was loose to begin with. It was all the tight corners and the battery being slightly larger than the bracket... At the first few corners I thought it was just the tyres scrubbing as there was a fair bit of that action anyway and was only happening on the corners..by time I pulled over to check it there was a nice hole worn out of it and bits of chewed battery and acid all over the place...it had also taken some wires out with it...well I wont mistake that particular sound again!
....hopefully at worst its a good clean,new battery and some general wire tidying...though Im going to keep a close eye on the alternator as it copped a fair bit of acid .
You know you are welcome to visit anytime Dave...just hope I get my living arrangemnts sorted soon so I actually have a place to start working on it...(running searches on domain.com using "garage" and "shed" as keywords

)