Speaking of Racor's, we have been having problems with our filters clogging after about 5 hours of running. The symptom we see when the filter clogs is engine rpm surging and huge loss of power. We have been trying fuel additives and they still seem to clog after about 5 hours of running. The location of the bowls make them hard to see, but we thought we could see a little sediment in the bottom of the bowl after draining them and changing the filter. We decided to remove the bowl to clean them and this is what we found in the bottom:
Not quite sure what it is, but it was close to 3/4" deep in the bottom of the bowl. I have not been out since discovering this, but I"m sure that this material in the bottom of the bowl is what was causing the filters to clog and the engines to surge after 5 hours of use. I'm not sure what we can do to prevent this from happening again. Any idea what this material is? Algae? Dirt?
Looks like a fiddler crab to me....y'all be around Port Eads? What micron filters are you running in the Racors? May be too small....Most of us run 30 micron on the Racors and 2 or 10 on the secondary spin ons.
I was at Port Eads today and the fiddler crabs are everywhere.
That's what I was thinking too. We are running the 10 micron on the racor's and 10 micron on the spin on engine mounted filter. I am a bit worried that if I go to the 30 micron racor, the 10 micron spin on will end up getting clogged with all of the gunk we are picking up with the racor's. How long do you go between changing the 30 micron racor's. Do your spin ons get clogged? Problem is that the filters seem to get clogged at the worst possible time.
Talked to one of the contractors at Port Eads and he said they are on a 390 day contract which started in May, so hopefully they will be finished in time for part of next Summer.
Jack, I installed drain valves in place of the plugs at the bottom of the bowls. The valves have a female pipe thread on the discharge end. Normally, I keep a plug there in case the valve opens accidentally, but to clean the bowl, I use an outboard motor squeeze bulb with hose and male thread fitting to attach to the valve. With the Racor lid still in place, you can suck the bowl clean without removing it. Fresh fuel is sucked in from the tank so the filter stays full. The hose allows you to pump it into a jug that normally won't fit under the bowl.
In your case, a valve and bulb could be installed semi perminently on each filter so you can check for crap easily every few hours. Eventually, since you use the heck out of that boat, the fuel will get polished out and the problem should go away.
A squeeze bulb with a few fittings is a great tool to have on the boat to help prime the fuel system when all else fails.
Eddy's idea is a real good one. Having the same micron filter on both the Racor and the secondary defeats the purpose of having two. Go with the 30 on the Racor and leave the 10 on the spin on. I used to clog a 30 micron Racor about every 25 or 30 hours until I put the Algae-X magnetic fuel conditioners on, then went to 75+. I seldom change the secondary filters, maybe once every 3 or 4 primary changes. The Algae X units probably don't work very well on gas, but seem to work great on diesel. But they only work when you run the boat a lot, need to pass the fuel thru them a good bit for the magnetic field to break up the clumped up hydrocarbon molecules....or so the snake oil salesman says.
Don't worry, the 30 micron will catch the bad stuff, and should extend your filter change interval a lot. The 10 secondary will clean up what little is left after the 30. On my Cummins 6BTAs, the rpm will start varying when the Racor is getting clogged and the rpm will just not reach normal levels when the secondary is getting clogged. I guess the difference is the Racor is on the suction side of the lift pump and the secondary is on the pressure side.
Go to the 30 on your Racors and you will solve 90% of your issues, and the more you use the boat, the less crap will remain in the tank & fuel system.
I'm going to get a case of 30 micron Racor's today and put my engineer brother on Eddy G's tool. We've been putting the liquid Algae-X in with refills for the last 2 months, so that may explain the mass of debris in the bottom of the bowl.
You might also try to remove the plate on top of the tank and check how much water you have in there. I believe that algee indicates water.
Take a stick and put some water paste on it. The paste changes color in the presence of water. 'Stick' the tank. If you have more than a half inch of water, you might want to pump some of it out.
I cleared up a situation with a black algae(?) infection a few years ago with a product called BioBor. Put in an oz for every 40 gallons regularly after and have had no reocurrence since.
I had similiar problems with black algae. I fixed it by adding another filter and algecides. Check out my posts from the past. The Biobor has worked well for me also. I know that there are pros and cons to the system that I installed, but I am happy to report that I have not experienced any fuel problems since. Good luck.
