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Welch plug leaking

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airfrm

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So Ijust started my 2003GTI LE for the first time this year and I noticed water spraying out of the exhaust. After doing some research in this site, I s comingfrom the Welch plug. I see where you can reweld new ones, butaquestion I had was does anyone know if you can just drill them out, tap threads in and screw a plug in there?
 
The plug itself wouldn't have enough material to tap for that to be successful..... best to have it welded.... but to save the season of riding, you can scrape/sand back down to metal on that spot and use jb marine weld to hold for a while until winter months... then pull the pipe and have local shop drp welds on all the Welch plugs,
 
[MENTION=57920]racerxxx[/MENTION] here sells the patch plugs then you just need to have someone weld them up.
 
Ok sounds great. One question I have, what are the Welch plugs for anyway? Are they similar to freeze plugs?
 
No, they are not freeze plugs. They were just part of the sand casting process for the water jacketed pipe. Unfortunately the factory used very thin metal for the patch.
 
The term "freeze plug" is a misnomer. The sole purpose of those holes is to get the sand out of the casting. That's it. If they didn't put those holes on the casting you could not get the sand out. This is true for car engine blocks too. I've seen many an engine freeze cracked and those plugs never budged.
 
FWIW, its a very common problem, might be one of the most frequent failure I see on seadoo's.

So you are most definitely not the first guy, or probably not the millionth guy that has had to deal with this.

One comment, if you are going to address the issue, might want to closely inspect all the plugs and consider replacing them too, cuz if you fix one and then another one pops 6 weeks later you will be annoyed as all get out. (I speak from experience)
 
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