We wrapped up this project and here is the update.
I was able to get one more full turn on the loose junction, 3/4 of it was without any tools except for a vice to hold the pipe in place. The last quarter turn required a long pipe for more leverage but it turned without cracking or anything. I don't think it's going to leak or anything.
Muffler is replaced with a slightly bigger one with 2" inlet and outlet. I have ordered CENTEK-1601805 from marinepartssource.com but the dimensions did not fit the description they had online. It is bigger than the description but a piece of starboard made a satisfactory installation.
In order to fit the 2" hose to the elbow (for the elbow to muffler connection) which has a 1.5" outlet, I cut a small piece of the old hose to go over the elbow outlet. The old hose has an outer diameter of 2 inches so it makes an acceptable sleeve.
The long exhaust hose from the muffler to the thruhull was 1 5/8 hose. I was planning to use it as is and in order to connect it to the 2" outlet of the muffler I bought a fiberglass reducer. It was all nice and good until I started shortening this long hose for installing the reducer. As I cut the hose, it started dripping water, the more I cut the more water came out of the hose. Until then I did not check inside of this hose because it looked perfectly fine from outside. This is what I saw:
There was a huge restriction in the exhaust. I was so happy to find it because one of the potential reasons for the white smoke problem we have in the exhaust was high exhaust back pressure. We talked about it here:
https://ericsonyachts.org/ie/threads/white-smoke-in-e38-universal-diesel-engine.17203/
And it is right here. I happily bought 9 feet of new 2 inch exhaust hose and installed it the next day. Here is another picture when the hose was outside:
With this, the project wrapped up:
- Exhaust elbow cleaned
- Heat exchanger lightly cleaned with vinegar (it looked pretty good to me)
- Muffler replaced, all new hoses from the elbow to the thru-hull
- Replaced the broken coolant temperature gauge which is installed at the manifold outlet
- Replaced the thermostat and the temperature sender at the thermostat housing, now we have two temp gauges. We are a bit paranoid around losing the raw water underway which happened twice already. Now we have two overheat alarms.
Started the engine yesterday and after warming up and making sure the coolant levels are good, the good old white smoke was back. Such a disappointment.
I am still happy with all this work done especially after seeing the failure of the hose. White smoke still comes out but I guess it comes out more easily.
Also, there is no exhaust smell in the cockpit locker after running the engine as opposed to what we had before.