I recently read about another boat that had a zinc in the heat echanger. It was at or part of the drain plug. Does anyone know if a 1981 Ericson 38 has a zinc in it's heat exchanger? It would save me some time and effort of going and looking.
I think maybe what you think is a drain plug should really be a zinc. I have not seen a heat exchanger that had a seperate drain plug. I think the zinc are NPT so they could eaily be mistaken for a plug if the zinc is all used up.
Thank you for your replies. I haven't looked at the heat exchanger yet to find this plug/zinc, I had only heard that one might exist. I'll drive down and take a look.
You may want to remove the end cap off the exchanger near the zinc port and be sure you don't have many years worth of built up old slimy zinc pieces collected there. You'd be surprised.
I replaced the zinc in my heat exchanger this past weekend. It was completely gone. Probably had never been inspected since the heat exchanger was installed. The thread for the plug is NPT, so I didn't put any tape or sealant on it. Ran the engine for about 20 minutes and there was no leaking.