Chinese manufacturing

Pulled the PCM engine on my Shamrock the other day in preparation of putting the GT40 in. Looked into ends of the Hi Teks to see how they are doing.  130 hours in saltwater with freshwater flush after each use, I now have a nice set of paper weights. I think I bought them in 2015 - the company had outsourced their manufacturing to China. Who knows what "stainless" they used but oem cast iron lasts longer in this environment.

Yes Pete that would be looking in up at the top curve of the riser. If it was a cooling problem it would have been in the design because it always had good flow out the exhausts and the hoses are fine. Last time I drove it was about a 2 mile trip to the ramp-it would not have made it with that hole so it's been falling apart since then. The other side looks to be having the start of this issue. It lasted less time at almost triple the cost of an oem cast iron exhaust.

67 ski nat wrote: Imagine if it was a important moving part

Gary, if you have small magnet to hand see how well it sticks may give us a handle on the grade used... my guess is its cheep 304, the less a magnet sticks the better the grade in general. 

You had me wondering Roger so I just went out and checked- a magnet does not even remotely stick,I even reached up inside with a magnet on a stick to check as well. Most of this below has appeared since it came home in April but now I understand why I had been starting to get discoloration on that side 

Saltwater is a heck of a thing and those aren’t thick - do you have any zink left on the plugs?   I am pretty sure one of mine the zink fell off quite quickly.   Not a lot of room for error on these things - I have in my possession a set of these off a freshwater big block boat that were ran without water and the exhaust Tubes are basically all garbage inside.

Sorry Roger  but I guess it's better now than after you go through that work!

Hi Tec should acknowledge lack of quality assurance since they surely are responsible for having their supplier make them from the proper alloy.

Blaming China isn’t the answer. It’s the responsible party that failed to either specify, qualify or assure the product meets requirements. I’d call Hi Tec and ask them if they’re good for replacing these.

Will they work with the GT 40 as well (I assume)?