Water maker cylinder cracked again, custom tool - 2015

End of March 2015 Anchored in Isla Grande at Ixtapa, Mexico 

This tool we made up for replacing the cylinder.

 We cut off an Allen wrench and had it welded to a rod with the rod welded into a 5\16 - 8 mm socket. The total overall length of the "new" tool is 12" long.  Makes life easier!!

 Again Debbie replaced the right cylinder on our Spectra Watermaker 200T Deluxe. This cylinder has cracked twice now. After trouble shooting the leak and finding it is a cylinder again we called Spectra Water makers. We then had to arrange for a cylinder to be shipped some place in the US for some cruiser friend to pick up on some trip up there and return it to us. Spectra Water maker does not ship to Mexico. Of course all this time (months the water maker is leaking a lot of water and not producing the 8 gph (gallons per hour) it is supposed to.

 This is a pain to replace and so we asked Spectra Watermaker 200T Deluxe Water makers support how we can prevent this from happening again? For instance could we convert the higher pressure 200T to a non-tropical version which makes 6 gph instead of 8 gph but uses less pressure. Spectra said we could do this but it would not stop the cylinders from cracking. What they did say was good and bad. Spectra said they had gotten a bad supply of cylinders and others have had this problem also. So this was the first we have heard of that in the last three years. It makes sense as the new cylinder they sent us last time cracked also. It is not fair and has been a major lot of work each season tearing apart the water maker and needing to use it at the same time. Debbie puts plastic sheeting under the Spectra water maker and then vacuums up the leaked out water with the shop vac each time making water. A lot of work! Any way this may be a good thing (bad batch of cylinders) because now that the cylinder is replaced and is not cracked or leaking it should never happen again!

We used our handy dandy air compressor (we usually use for breathing 

while cleaning the bottom) for blowing out the piston in the old cylinder.

White piston in cracked cylinder.

New cylinder.

Cracked cylinder with piston in it.

Put the nozzle of the hose from the DeWalt air compressor hose into one of the slanted "check-valve" openings in the cylinder. The air pushed the piston out.

White piston on plastic.

Unit where cylinder goes.

Leaking ferule.

We have been making water now for about a month without any issues but one. Because we had to remove the cylinder a bunch of times the SS tube to the membrane is leaking. We have had to pull off the cylinder then find the crack then replace it and still use it then replace it by pulling it off again etc a couple times. So the ferule is worn out on the SS hose and we had asked Spectra to send us a new one and some “O” rings but none came with the cylinder. Oh well so a minor leak we can handle for now.