Exhaust renovation- no more Elastomuffle

[tribologist]

Nah, that pin probably just prevent the gear to retract.. no big deal..

[Dieselram94]

I think a big reminder on the keychain and a big sign as well as a well established habit of opening it immediately upon boarding the boat should be sufficient.

Something like a "remove before flight" warning flag with a note to check open exhaust hose ball valve.

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I like it! Lol

I do have a old steering wheel club still. Could always put that across the wheel as a reminder. It would be fool proof! Haha

[DesertAlbin736]

Update on exhaust system: I went over to the boat yesterday to check on a couple of things and while there pulled up the panel board over the aft cabin port quarter berth to take a look at the exhaust hose, check valve & shut off ball valve. The check valve is the exact same as the one in Driftless, same part number & all, with a manufacture date of May 14, 1992, so that pretty much dates the time of the repower job. With the check valve being that old there's no way to tell if it actually works. Of course this shows that the hose runs mostly below the water line which is about at the level of the quarter berth panel.

Unfortunately the shut off ball valve is stuck fast in the open position & will take some 'Crystal Blue Persuasion' to be able to cycle it, up to and possibly including removing it and overhauling it. Woo hoo, yet another PM project! Of course out here we skip spring & go straight into summer, and we're already up in the low 90s, so add 10 to 15 degrees to that for inside the boat which limits the amount of time one can comfortably tolerate working inside the cabins.

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[dkirsop]

Install a deck plate in the panel board above the valve handle and then you can exercise the valve regularly without having to remove the screws that hold the panel board down. You can also get to it quickly in the event you need to.

[tribologist]

Is it just my eyes... or is it a pvc fitting on the upstream side!

[DesertAlbin736]

Install a deck plate in the panel board above the valve handle and then you can exercise the valve regularly without having to remove the screws that hold the panel board down. You can also get to it quickly in the event you need to.

There are no screws holding the panel board down. Just have to clear all the stuff out from on top of it. We use the aft cabin storage & not for sleeping & leave the cushions at home, so it's mostly luggage, lifejackets, & extra fenders.

Is it just my eyes... or is it a pvc fitting on the upstream side!

Yes, grey PVC male thread/barb hose fittings on upstream & downstream sides of the ball valve. By the time exhaust gets there it's cooled off by the raw water flow....that is if the raw water pump is working & water is flowing. It's worked OK so far for nigh on 30 years & over 600 engine hours over the past 6 years. Will be interesting to see what it takes to get the ball valve freed up.

[ssrig]

Is that ball valve a brass one?
Not sure I would trust pvc at that point, that’s a pretty critical area to have a problem like old pvc fatigue breaking.
Nice and clean under there though!

[ssrig]

Maybe it’s Marelon.

[DesertAlbin736]

Is that ball valve a brass one?
Not sure I would trust pvc at that point, that’s a pretty critical area to have a problem like old pvc fatigue breaking.
Nice and clean under there though!

Brass or bronze? Hard to say just from looking at it. The PVC has no real stress on it. It's highly likely that ball valve has not been "exercised" since installed in 1992 or at least since 2001. The most recent previous owner from 2001 to 2014 didn't seem like the type to keep up with stuff like that & I haven't given it any real thought to it until now either. One of the things about this boat which we paid dearly for was that it had had a pretty thorough recent interior restoration. The engine was not as new as we were first led to believe, but has held up well. Since then I've replaced the fuel lift pump, the raw water pump, the starter and alternator, adjusted valves, pulled & inspected the exhaust elbow, checked & cleaned the inside of the heat exchanger, plus usual maintenance items. But you know after looking & looking for an A25 we drove 850 miles to southern Idaho & found it parked in the owner's barn. At the time there were only two other A25s I could find listed for sale, one in Florida and one in Texas, each much farther away than Idaho. I think there were one or two for sale in BC, but one had no trailer and the other was a project boat. There was a lake nearby where the boat was in American Falls, ID near Pocatello but this was in March and the lake was still closed for the season so we couldn't test run it. So had to make a decision based on looking it over on land as best we could. Not a lot of marine surveyors around that area. When we did get it in Lake Powell we could not get the raw water pump to prime & had a high temp alarm, so the marina was as far as we could get from the launch ramp. I thought hanging those spare fuel cans over the bow was just insane, and so chopping the bow sprit as short as possible was one of the first changes I made.

In this photo my trailer hitch ball wasn't the correct height causing the trailer to not be level, so that was fixed soon after.

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[tribologist]

I get a kick of those fuel can holders. That's a very big secondary containment....

[tribologist]

Got tge Centeck mini muffler/checkvalve installed and tested today. If anything, its quieter inside the cabin than with the elastomuffle but in any case it makes for a nice cheap and reliable replacement.

[nebulatech]

Almost every Groco ball valve now has a grease fitting. I didn't see one on yours, Steve, but forcing new grease through might help free it up if it's possible. The steering wheel bar made me smile. That's funny!

If I'm not mistaken, grey pvc is schedule 80 pipe. We had that on the pool heater growing up. It was grey schedule 80 for about 2 feet from the heater, then standard white schedule 40. I once accidentally melted the pipes by leaving the heater on after the pump shut off. (Sorry again Dad!) The white pipe was sagging.
The grey stuff was unaffected.

[Dieselram94]

Got tge Centeck mini muffler/checkvalve installed and tested today. If anything, its quieter inside the cabin than with the elastomuffle but in any case it makes for a nice cheap and reliable replacement.

I noticed the bearing you have in front of the stuffing box. Did you install that? I’m considering doing that myself. Did you have trouble keeping the motor and shaft aligned prior to installing the bearing?

[nebulatech]

Tribologist, I saw your photos from the FB group, with water coming out the exhaust on the trailer. How to you run your engine out of the water? Can you share a picture? I realize I don't have an engine in my boat, but its something I have been curious about for a while.

[WillieC]

I installed a tee at the through hull, the cap of which is straight in line with the through hull. It serves as a clean out and a place to hook up a hose (actually a chunk of pex) that I stick into a bucket that sits on the swim step or right next to the boat on a pair of sawhorses. It helps to prime it with a little help from the hose. Of course, once primed, close the inlet valve. I don't connect the garden hose directly as ours puts out 85 psi.

To stay on topic, Nice job on the muffler!