I was going down river about 7 miles and I thought the exhorst note had changed so I moored up to a local bouy to check....9 hours solid work later in 38c engine bay....Impeller check....water strainer check....heat exchanger check....exhorst elbow check...knackered go to bed....next morning, start again going around each part again, looking for the abnormal...impeller check...strainer check, are what's that mark on the plastic cap, so I looked and pulled it.....it opened up like perforated paper half way around the cap. I worked in engineering all my life so investigated the cap carefully...the design of the thread in the cap was too close the the top of the cap thereby reducing the material thickness at a critical point. On a bouy 7 miles from anyplace what do I do....firstly I spoke lot of bad word about Volvo....the plastic cap was made for approx £3 Volvo price £237 as they do not sell there poorly made cap on it's own...after a bit of thinking time I turned the black plate over on the strainer so the pip was down then cut 4 square pieces of CLINGFILM put them together over the cap less strainer and bound it on with amalgamate tape...this effectively sealed the top so the pump could produce a vacume....430 miles later it's still working. However now I have 3 water strainers from China for £70 and they look ok. So Volvo let's hope China make more parts for Volvo marine Engines.
Hehe, they used to make good ones. The older, larger black plastic one we had lasted 20 years before the brass parts rotted out from dezincification. We put a Vetus in, as Volvo wanted silly money. It's not fantastic, the lid is clear plastic, which seems like a good idea until you realize how brittle that stuff is compared to ABS and it does bind a lot. But it came faster than AliExpress could go ;)
Great ingenuity on the fix! Mirage has one of these and the lids seem pretty bullet proof and it's not too expensive. The lid is the transparent part and on my pre departure checklist I'm supposed to poke my phone camera above the strainer and check its clear (when i remember to do it!).
I need to get an exhaust temp sensor to catch this sort of thing - it would be easy to miss until too late and damage was done.
Well done getting back safely!
https://www.force4.co.uk/item/Vetus/Type-330-Water-Strainer/T9W?stock=18865&member=49145&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20225094237&gclid=Cj0KCQjwss3DBhC3ARIsALdgYxPG8IVxUuCuEIvPHap-xWm2NfrF3bdnDbh-yKMizzMAMuxgzioKdPoaAi8GEALw_wcB
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005924776778.html
Quote from: Laysula on August 10 2025, 11:36https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005924776778.html
That looks like an exact copy of the Vetus one but for a good price 👍