"Roger Long" wrote in news:46befafa$0$3109
:

Next year, I'll put in a vacuum gauge but, in the meantime, will this
strategy work?



Sounds like a winner. If the filter's clogged a little, it'll run but
not at full speed. It simply runs out of fuel, limiting RPM.

If you shove it up to WOT, it'll run a ways, then start slowing down as
the engine starves for fuel, the vacuum in the lines increasing. If it
continues to run wide open with that wonderful carbon cloud from shoving
too much fuel into too little air, that doesn't mean the filter's not
clogged. It only means the filter isn't clogged enough that it doesn't
get enough fuel to go WOT. It's a matter of how much they're clogged
up...(c;

Most all of this problem is very easy to eliminate....Fill the damned
tanks BEFORE you store the boat so it can't breathe in and out of the
tanks...just like an airplane pilot does. Full tanks don't breathe,
don't ingest and condense water on bare walls inside the tank. Full
tanks don't have water in them, so they don't have black algae growing
between the water and the fuel to clog up the filter. No magic Diesel-
Fuel-In-A-Bottle, at $12/pint, is necessary...at all! There's a diesel
car out front that's 34 years old. It has never seen a drop of BioBor or
whatever other magic potions Waste Marine sells to gullible boaters. It
has never had its fuel polished, either. It has had a new fuel filter
about every 5-8 years, when I feel guilty. None of them have ever needed
to be changed that I can see. The filters are of the finest felt blocks
I've ever seen. But, if I'm not going to drive her for a while, I FILL
THE TANKS FULL. This must be the reason I've never seen any water in the
separator or black algae. The car is parked on the riverfront of the
Ashley River, not in a dry climate, either.

"Caution - Contains Petroleum Distillates"......Diesel-Fuel-In-A-Can.