Mixing Elbow: OEM or Stainless?

[Rapanui]

Our 3YM30s had factory beautifully crafted fabricated stainless elbow of thin material. The problem was that the weld areas developed pinholes and sprayed the starter motor with hot salt water after 2 - 3 years. However well you weld stainless the welding process changes the material properties at the weld area.
Replaced both with HDI cast elbows 6 years ago at a cost of less than half that of the OEM parts including shipping, tax etc and no further problems

[Seadaddler]

My friends have told me that the stainless mixing elbo from HDI are just
as good as the ones from Yanmar and been happy with how long they are lasting.
I have stainless mixing elbo on its way from HDI soon so will match it up to the
one from Yanmar.
Nick

[LittleWing77]

Originally Posted by darylat8750

I saw an injection elbow custom made out of a Nickel/Copper alloy. (Nibral maybe?) It was a beautiful thing.

How lame are we, eh? Going into paroxysms of delight over the beauty of a custom exhaust elbow...!

(By the way, I immediately pictured it in my mind's eye and thought... yes! SO beautiful!)

LittleWing77

[Nineteen]

We have a HDI unit on our 3JH. I installed it back in 2017 and it is just as good as the day it was fitted. No scale buildup like the OEM cast iron one.

The only change I made was to swap the brass plug for a stainless one and mounted a 100 degree C thermal switch the same as I had on the iron one.

I would never go back to the OEM elbow in our application. We are in salt water btw and it has done roughly 1000hrs.

Cheers
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