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DSK DSK is offline
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First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 1,419
Default Fuel polishing filter

Joe wrote:
Re-piped ? Is your hard piped? What kind of tanks & capacity?


New lines (industrial (ie not refrigeration) 3/8" copper
tubing (which is overkill, but it's easier to work with & I
like it), new valves, a new manifold, plus the new filter
housing.



Which one? We started out with the 900FG (in fact I still
have it) which IIRC the elements were about that. But it's
designed for a 90gph engine, whereas ours is only going to
demand 1/20th of that at full throttle.



You might have a problem with it, if it has a water seperator at the
bottom of the housing you need the 90gph flow for the seperator to work
properly.


Well, you at least need a high percentage of that 90 gph for
the turbine to get any centrifugal action. OTOH, the bowl is
large enough that at very low flow, the water will just
settle out. The ones we use, 50 gph rating, also have a
large bowl and the centrifugal element should work at much
lower flow rates.

The real answer is, I don't know, I have only seen a very
small amount of water in the seperator once.


The price is right, I'm assuming the twin mount is in line to your
engine and not for a polishing system.


Currently, yes. When I put in a polishing system, it will be
a pressure feed system using the same filter/seperator
though. I will only use it when the engine is off line.

One important point I just learned: in a polishing system,
the return should be to the bottom of the tank. If it spills
in at the top, it does not scour the bottom of the tank
sufficiently and there will still be pockets of crud.


I use a vaccume gauge in-line to
avoid shutting down. I should go to a dual system, sure is nice in a
bind to just switch and deal with the filter later.


Yes, very much so.



My main and gen have a racor, then 2 secondary filters on the main and
one on the genset.


Same here. The genset isn't bad, but the s
filters on our engine are guaranteed to spill fuel and are a
PITA to get to when the engine is hot. I change them once a
year whether they need it or not, the benefit of using 2m
filter elements.


I've only heard of paper towel and TP filters but have never seen one,
better than nothing in some third world **** hole were filters may not
be found.

Smart thing to do is invest in many filters before kicking off.


Yep. Any time I have less than a dozen on hand, I feel a
little nervous. And they're cheaper by the case.

As for paper towel & TP filters, it seems likely to me that
you would end up with paper going into the engine,
especially if they took a slug of water. They may trap lots
of little particles, but then, with no structural
reinforcing to the filter media, what keeps it from flexing
and letting them all go again?

And I can say definitely that their claims of use on
military & gov't vessels is bordering on fraud. NAVSEA would
make a dartboard out of the balls of any engineering CPO who
put in such a system without authorization.

DSK