T&Ts up and running; now if we can return it to like it was before with
lots of posts. Here, I'll start one, and this incident caught me completely
off base..
A week ago, the evidence suggested a blown gasket between the exhaust
manifold and exhaust elbow. With the elbow removed, the gasket was
definitely, but our only alternative was to reassemble everything and
continue on until we reached the next town. Removal and closer inspection
of the gasket revealed that the underlying problem was that the mounting
flange on the elbow had disintegrated, leaving just barely enough to get us
a few hours to the next town.
On my Westerbeke the exhaust elbow is cast aluminum. I've periodically
removed the elbow to check inside for signs of corrosion, and the mounting
flange always appeared okay, Well, now it seems like paying better
attention to this flange, which is quite hefty to begin with, might be
beneficial. This flange went bad very quickly. I'd never come across a
problem like this before, thus never considered carrying a spare exhaust
elbow. By the way, when a cast aluminum exhaust elbow that is flange
mounted goes bad, the boat is dead in the water as there is no way to work
around the problem. I suspect that even with access to a welder, welding on
a flange to cast aluminum would be difficult, if not impossible.
The good news is that we got to the next town, but had problems locating
another elbow; fortunately we were able to locate one and it turned out to
be the only one available in North America.
*Rudy & Jill Sechez *
*BRINEY BUG-a 34' Sail-Assisted Trawler *
*850-832-7748 *
*www.trawlertrainingabc.com http://www.trawlertrainingabc.com *
Jax FL northbound
T&Ts up and running; now if we can return it to like it was before with
lots of posts. Here, I'll start one, and this incident caught me completely
off base..
A week ago, the evidence suggested a blown gasket between the exhaust
manifold and exhaust elbow. With the elbow removed, the gasket was
definitely, but our only alternative was to reassemble everything and
continue on until we reached the next town. Removal and closer inspection
of the gasket revealed that the underlying problem was that the mounting
flange on the elbow had disintegrated, leaving just barely enough to get us
a few hours to the next town.
On my Westerbeke the exhaust elbow is cast aluminum. I've periodically
removed the elbow to check inside for signs of corrosion, and the mounting
flange always appeared okay, Well, now it seems like paying better
attention to this flange, which is quite hefty to begin with, might be
beneficial. This flange went bad very quickly. I'd never come across a
problem like this before, thus never considered carrying a spare exhaust
elbow. By the way, when a cast aluminum exhaust elbow that is flange
mounted goes bad, the boat is dead in the water as there is no way to work
around the problem. I suspect that even with access to a welder, welding on
a flange to cast aluminum would be difficult, if not impossible.
The good news is that we got to the next town, but had problems locating
another elbow; fortunately we were able to locate one and it turned out to
be the only one available in North America.
*Rudy & Jill Sechez *
*BRINEY BUG-a 34' Sail-Assisted Trawler *
*850-832-7748 *
*www.trawlertrainingabc.com <http://www.trawlertrainingabc.com> *
Jax FL northbound
