Elastomuffle

T

TSL

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Having had the Elastomuffle on my Centaur fail earlier in the week crossing Harwich Harbour I'm now not sure whether to replace with something more up to date or just connect up the two hoses. The engine is a relatively new Beta with a seperate antisiphon airvent and water lock both installed when then engine was replaced. Apart from the obvious risks of another in line device (it was blowing 30 knots when it failed and not immediately knowing the problem caused us to run back to Mersea) does anyone have views on noise reduction?
 
When we had the Elastomuffler fail in a Berwick we just replaced it with a piece of plain hose. There was no obvious increase in noise.

On that installation with a MD11C there was no water trap, just the E'muffler in the pipe rising up from the bilges followed by a swan neck before it fell to the exhaust outlet. We later fitted a Vetus water trap immediately after the engine but not specifically because we had done away with the E'muffler.

Neil_S asked about it on here a while back (last winter I think) so a search should find all that was said then.

The E'muffler is still available and a Google search will find it if you want to replace it.
 
I have an elastomuffle fitted to Iris Mary, bought at a boat jumble twenty years ago, so I am interested in an account of one of them failing.
How did it fail, and would I be able to detect this happening before it finally gave ?
 
One day we found it had split apart round the joint between the top and bottom halves, filling the lazarette with water and exhaust gases. It was probably only about 10 years old when that happened and we had no prior indication that it was about to fail but it was not something we normally ever looked at. Carry a bit of hose and a couple of connectors and some clips that can be put in in its place should the need arise
 
Jeanne - ours we reckon was original so perhaps c25 years old - it split on the join, but at the back, so you had to put your hand around it to feel the hole. Looking at it out of the boat you can see a noticeable kink from where the attached hoses had not been exactly in line, so part of the central rim joint (which looks to be some sort of rubber weld) had been under tension - the rubber also feels fairly hardened and just old. I suspect the hot exhaust gases over the years have taken their toll and the inside had a tight collection of looped rubber strips, presumabaly for the sound muffling, which the raw water would have had to pushed past and by the looks of it pressurising the whole casing and putting the joint under expansion tension every cycle.

The problem is the circumstances we noticed there was no water coming out the exhaust were not good and we needed the engine to beat the tide and storm to get to where we were going. Having checked the inlet strainer and impellor we could only think of some sort of blockage at the hull fitting, and assuming we were about to have an overheating engine had to run back to where we'd come from. We only worked out the problem the next day by noticing a huge amount of sea water in the bilges - it had been dumping it into the rear locker which eventually overflowed. If we'd know that it existed I guess we could have tried and tapped it up if conditions had been friendler, but in the circumstances I reckon I would have still run for home, and were fortunate we could.

Needless to say I'm not going to replace it like for like, and I'd say given its style of construction it's got a finite and unpredictable lifespan.

Tim
 
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