QSB trans Cooler Marine Age

[Thomas Hale]

I have a 2009 Cummins QSB 5.9 230 HO with 3050 hours. Have owned since new. Boat has spent 5 years in brackish water or freshwater of the Chesapeake. For the past 3 years has traveled to FL and New England seasonally. It has the after cooler serviced annually and the engine zincs are changed every 3 months in salt water and every 6 months in fresh water. Have never experienced more than about 50-60% zinc wastage. After reading your article on Marine Age, I was just wondering if the transmission cooler or fuel cooler should be changed, given their marine age?
Cheers,
Tom
Now in Lake Champlain VT

Topic

[Rob Schepis]

Boat is not on the sound, she’s on the south shore in Moriches. We’ll be out in Shelter Island the weekend preceding July 4th holiday

[Thomas Hale]

Rob, I will be passing through LI sound next week. Where are you located?

[Rob Schepis]

Gear Oil Cooler

I would simply replace the gear oil cooler with the high-quality class II CU-NI units with zinc ports as sold here. Cheap insurance…….

[Corey Schmidt]

The transmission cooler is original to the engine. It does not have a provision for a zinc. The gear cooler has never been service, but i have not found any reference to servicing it in the manuals. The engine has one zinc in the heat exchanger and two zincs in the after-cooler. According to my records the zincs have been changed 21 times in 3050 hours. They were never found to be more than about 60% consumed.

As far as the fuel cooler, we spend about 6 months a year in waters of 80 degrees or so.

Tom, you should pull the gear oil cooler and service it just as you would the heat exchanger… which leads me to my next question, have you ever serviced your heat exchanger? or at least inspected it for scaling or “bits” of impeller, etc. and replaced the end cap gaskets?

If anything, all of theses seawater components should be pulled and inspected to ensure they’re in tip-top shape.

Just think about what will happen if your gear oil cooler became compromised and you have no low oil pressure alarm indication?

[Corey Schmidt]

Gear oil cooler

Tom, are your gear oil coolers original to the engines? Do they have provisions for zincs?

Tell us how often you have “serviced” the gear cooler since new?

No way to service the fuel cooler… we always pull them off new engines as the risk is just too high unless you’re in very warm waters…

[Author]

Replies