what grade of alloy is a omc gearcase made from

[phillnjack]

Might sound a daft question

But does anyone know what grade of alloy OMC used for their gearcases in the 1990's ?

I got asked this by a welder friend and I have never even thought about it before.

[phillnjack]

anybody ?

[Krazymaan]

Aluminium or Aluminum as we call it.
My educated guess is they are made of 5086 Aluminium Alloy.
You can Wikipedia it. It was used in a lot of boat stuff since it was highly corrosive resistant and very weldable.

[powerabout]

both Merc and OMC have their own metals and they change over the years

[bigbore]

5051 is the aluminum alloy for omc,welding rod for the block is 4043.

[H2OPERF]

How did you come across that info.

[Chaz]

Is this where I'm sposta say .... from the slag they ladle off the Mercury furnace . ?

How did you come across that info.

Since everyone's just guessing , I'm gonna say .. somewhere in the 355 - 356 family ... since they are the most common ...

[H2OPERF]

Yea merc uses bottom of the barrel aluminum they sell the good stuff off the top to brp then they separate the slag to make mercury phantom black and sell it back . I know the the first gm-ls blocks were 319t5 now i think they are from the stronger 356 alloy. Dave

[MattGreen]

If you really, really want to know the alloy composition you can take a housing (or even just a piece) to a Non Destructive Test (NDT) facility and have it shot with a Posiitve Material Identification (PMI) x-Ray gun. These devices are used extensively in the petrochemical and nuclear industries to confirm that fabricated components were build from the alloys specified.

Matt

[H2OPERF]

And after the PMI X-Ray or PFM smoke and mirrors we would still pull out a stick of 4043 and weld it up

[powerabout]

I remember way back 1984 when Merc finally made engines for salt water they said aluminum drink cans were part of the alloy they melt.
was it called xk something?

[Chaz]

And after the PMI X-Ray or PFM smoke and mirrors we would still pull out a stick of 4043 and weld it up

After spending money on hi-tech x-rays and a smoke machine , I always go that extra little bit and hold a 1/8" 4043 and a 1/16" 5356 like chop-stix and feed my own special blend of each .... I call it 9399 ...

[H2OPERF]

I can only use 1 chop stick at a time and stab my dragon rolls... so I guess i'm out on that process, no wonder my welds aren't as nice as yours. Plenty of beer cans out there but I think they are made from sheet which is a 4 digit alloy, My uncle worked at Alcoa premium castings plant in CA he told me 4 digit extrusion/sheet 3 digit are casting alloys, what I was told anyway. Dave

[loop]

our inspection dept at work has a PMI gun. I'll get them to shoot a housing and maybe whatever other parts i have lying around. It may take a few days til they come by the machine shop

[Markus]

I remember way back 1984 when Merc finally made engines for salt water they said aluminum drink cans were part of the alloy they melt.
was it called xk something?

XK-360. Made from recycled aluminum cans. It combines corrosion resistance with low cost:

https://www.mercurymarine.com/en/us/...istory/week30/

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=103264

Due to its low copper content, it is not very strong:

https://materialsdata.nist.gov/dspac...pdf?sequence=3

Here are some guys building an engine from beer cans. I guess they did not know that Mercury beat them to it:

http://hackaday.com/2012/06/25/melti...lding-engines/