Another costly repair

[kathylsails]

While heading out to spend time in Beaufort over the New Years' holidays, I was at the helm and heard a "thunk" and then a change in the engine sounds. I slowed down and alerted my husband, and a few minutes later the pilot house started getting smoky. After we grabbed the fire extinguisher, dropped anchor, and turned off the engine, my hubby discovered that one of the elbows by the exhaust manifold had corroded and fallen off. Fortunately, we weren't far from our dock, so he wired it back together enough for us to slowly make our way back. The repairman found that another elbow was also badly corroded. Repair bill: Almost $3,000. We just had our genset repaired earlier in 2013--more $$ to a different repairman. It's a good thing we love our boat!

[whwells]

Kathisalis: Sorry to hear of your big expense. The good news is you have taken care of a major maintainance problem for the future. Hate it when these unexpected expenses occur - but it is a boat. Having owned them for so many years - you know even with the best care and annual work it just happens.
Wish the boats loved us more. They all like money to be thrown at them. Happy you were close to port.
I ordered the Vac. Flush system for my boat today. Way more than I can afford, but it will be nice for this summer cruising. The manual leaves something to be desired.
whwells "Howard"
2006 35te Sportfisher/Flybridge
2004 Osprey Pilothosue 22

[Tree]

I share your pain with this - we've got a core plug on the oil pump with a pin hole in it. Due to its location, we may need to remove the fuel pump and being a 28, the only way we can see to remove the fuel pump will be to pull the engine.

For what is going to be a £0.50p part, it could potentially costs £1000's!

Fingers crossed the weather holds on tuesday for the Yanmar specialist to have a look at it and see if another way can be done to fix it.

[marko]

Been there too... Were the new elbows a stock replacement or custom made? If custom, who made them and were they stainless steel?

[sharffj]

We had similar situation. Couple of years ago just inside Columbia River Bar on a snotty day had the bolt on the ring clamp that holds the exhaust elbow on, fail on Starboard engine (actually broke). Fed hot exhaust onto sound insulation. Quickly shutdown engines, doused insulation with extinguisher and limped into Astoria on port engine. Not a hard fix to reattach exhaust with new clamp, but redoing sound insulation was a pain. Check your elbow on a regular basis and plan that you may need to replace them more often than you think. I'm on a 5 year plan for removing cleaning and/or replacing

[Bidgood]

There I was reading about Kathy's costly exhaust elbow repair. So I thought, "I have the same boat perhaps I should inspect mine." So I did. Well, I have a different engine, a Perkins 285 HP turbo, and a different boat, hull # "0" , the great experiment in producing the FC 30's.

The good news: the fiberglass elbows were fine. The bad news, I noticed a crack in the flange where the exhaust mixer attaches to the turbo. The bolts were rusted and given the heat and humidity of the turbo system, it was not something I wanted to attack myself. So I have a Hinckley (Yes the million dollar boats) repair guy fixing the problem. I am switching to stainless from the std. exhaust material for the new fitting. It will be an "ouch" for the wallet, but not a cardiac arrest.

Thanks, once again, to my fellow Albin owners for posting issues with the boats. I caught this one before it was a disaster. Thanks Kathy. Some times pride makes it hard to share the pain, but in the end it helps mitigate the group losses.

Tom

[jleonard]

Do you happen to have a pic of the cracked Perkins flange? I have dealt with literally hundreds of Perkins diesels and never heard of this type of failure on a Perkins part.