Seamac, After I pulled mine apart and found one of the flappers to be lodged I decided I was going to replace them. I contacted Volvo Penta yesterday by phone and email and they were real nice, they left me a message saying to leave them out and they even emailed me a copy of the bulletin which clearly states that they have done "extensive" testing and feel that the flappers do prevent water intrusion and are prone to failure.<br /><br />I did post earlier that I bought a set and was going to replace them and after I got the bulletin decided that Volvo was pretty confident that they aren't needed. So to prevent future problems I opted to go without and returned them to the shop.<br /><br />My boat only has 80 hours of run time on it and it did overheat once due to the pump impeller. The overheat period was very short cause we caught it within a couple of minutes of the failure. The flappers were very warped and they must be getting damaged due to the amount of heat flowing through the exhaust because I can't imagine one overheating causing these to be damaged this badly. If anything, they should change the design and material of them and the might last awhile.<br /><br />chihuahuax3, I read your post from about a year ago where your exhaust flapper came off and got lodged. The problem you had was exactly like mine, 3000 rpm and couldn't pull up on a plane. Did you have them remove them or did they just replace them? <br /><br />I'll let you guys know how it works once I get it back on the water.<br /><br /><br />Brad
