Skip Gundlach wrote:
At the St. Pete Strictly Sail last week, I saw a presentation on "fuel
polishing" which was really a pitch for Algae-X.


Algae-X has nothing to do with fuel polishing.

Wayne.B wrote:
I think the only honest answer is that the jury is still out on
Algae-X.

That's one way to put it. Another way is to say that nobody
has ever been able to show that having your fuel run between
two magnets has any positive benefits at all.

.... Without certified results I
find it hard to believe that either the navy or USCG would sign up.


I think that unless there's a MIL-SPEC on it, then claims
that it's used by any Federal agency are kind of dim.

Let me put it this way... not too many years ago, I did
engineering work by contract on several Navy and MSC ships.
They did not have anything installed anywhere in any
engineering system that was not type approved by NAVSEA (the
gods of marine engineering). No Gulf Coast filters using
toilet paper, no spinning magnets, no little crystal pyramids.




That said, I can tell you from experience what does work. My tanks
and fuel were in really lousy condition 2 years ago when I started.
We now have parallel Racors and vacuum guages on each engine. The
Racors can be switched in and out with ball valves on the input and
output of each filter, allowing filter elements to be hot swapped
underway. I also installed a fuel polishing system that allows the
fuel to be continuously circulated through the Racors when I'm at the
dock. I use Biobor fuel conditioner in the recommended quantities,
carry a good supply of spare Racor filter elements, check the vacuum
guages every few hours when underway, and drain a fuel sample from the
bottom of the Racor bowl at every filter change. Since doing all of
that we've had zero problems.

Bingo!

But hey, if you spend an extra 50$ on some new-age feel-good
doohickey for your fuel system, you could probably save on
some of those 7$ filter elements

DSK