Trials and tribulations of a boat owner

When I purchased the old girl I had her surveyed and a list of repairs made that had to be done before I would recieve the vessel. The surveyor accepted the works and I took recipt of the vessel since then I have made a number of repairs such as level guages fuel and water damage to the hull and various others. The latest is this piece of fresh ( containing antifreeze ) water pipe . this is situated at the very end of the engine and in a difficult to get at area of the engine room (if you are six foot one and sixteen stone that is. Anyway I came across this situation through a leak manifesting itself first from the "next in line" piece of pipe which looked as if it was dripping the contents of the engines cooling water from its vertical bend into the bildge . This I took off first (obviously) and tested to sixty psi and found no leak.

I then ran my fingers around the seating of the above piece of still attached pipe and found a splinter hanging down from the mating surfice, Hooking a finger nail under this I removed a large piece of Plastic padding (car body filler) from a deep indentation where the sealing "O" ring would be relied upon to seal and so this is actually where the water is passing around the "O" ring seal and travelling along the second pipe and dripping into the bildge .

The dark line around the inside of the collar is where the actual "O" ring is relied upon to seal

The above was a repair that was supposed to have been done properly and wasn`t (I wonder how many others will manifest themselves in the near future) C-O-M-E-B-A-C-K. what do you think ? not a chance! So I will get on with it and the photo above shows the errosion clearly after I had cleared it all out and prepared it for Ali welding, which I have completed today. the next thing is to machine it back to its original shape and surface treat it with an etching primer, undercoat and finish coat. I then have to reinstall it all and fill the system up with the relevant mix of water and antifreeze.

The cause of this errosion is, I believe, as a direct result of the engine design (Volvo, "They make good Anchors") in that the Alternator`s tensioning arm is captured on a bolt installed into the aforementioned pipe wall and there is an obvious earth leakage through this into the pipe (i.e it acts as a direct "ground") beacuse the engine is at an angle and the Joint in this pipe where the errosion occurs is at the top of the water pipe I believe that when the water is circulating there is some cavitation and air and water stalls at this high point increasing the chance for eletrolitic action to occur. IMHO but I`m right I bet!!!! I am going to check the port side engine too after checking the earting situation on the whole vessel.