Redundant Fuel Filters

Having finished a few of the projects on the honey do list I was given a new one this week. Replace of update my Racor 1000rf filters with a redundant set, before we head out the SF Gate. In doing some research I'd discovered RACOR is VERY PROUD of their gear. There appears to be at least two other companies selling a similar product. Has anyone on the forum had any experience with either of these brands and or products :

New Dual 1000 Series Diesel Fuel Filter Water Separator 180 360GPH 30 Micron | eBay is out of China and their unit runs $700 per pair and
Griffin has a pair for $900
GRIFFIN GTB681DM-MA / G1000DM-MA

where Racor wants over $1500. Understand everyone has or had Racor, but looking for any help/history with these other providers good or bad.

Given the prices just buying two new filers and four 3 way valves might save me a lot of money..

Dswizzler said:

Having finished a few of the projects on the honey do list I was given a new one this week. Replace of update my Racor 1000rf filters with a redundant set, before we head out the SF Gate. In doing some research I'd discovered RACOR is VERY PROUD of their gear. There appears to be at least two other companies selling a similar product. Has anyone on the forum had any experience with either of these brands and or products :

New Dual 1000 Series Diesel Fuel Filter Water Separator 180 360GPH 30 Micron | eBay is out of China and their unit runs $700 per pair and
Griffin has a pair for $900
GRIFFIN GTB681DM-MA / G1000DM-MA

where Racor wants over $1500. Understand everyone has or had Racor, but looking for any help/history with these other providers good or bad.

Given the prices just buying two new filers and four 3 way valves might save me a lot of money..

Click to expand...

Why not go with an original Racor? You're not saving anything by ebay china. BTW, did you see the shipping cost from ebay? It says from Florida, but it's coming from China through Florida.


RACOR 75500FGX FUEL FILTER WATER SEPARATOR SYSTEM : Amazon.com : Automotive

Or

Amazon.com: Racor 75500MAX2Max-Dual Fuel Filter/Water Separator: Sports & Outdoors

I'd love to go with Racor but for the 751000, the price is double the FJF from china and $600 more than the Griffin from Texas, as I read the adds. Just not sure Racor is twice as good. I need the larger units for the 6v92T I have on the boat.

Dswizzler said:

I'd love to go with Racor but for the 751000, the price is double the FJF from china and $600 more than the Griffin from Texas, as I read the adds. Just not sure Racor is twice as good. I need the larger units for the 6v92T I have on the boat.

Click to expand...

OK that makes sense. Regardless, you can get that knock off from Amazon. The freight the ebay merchant is charging is outrageous.

DUAL 1000 SERIES FUEL WATER SAPARATOR AFTERMARKET FOR RACOR 751000FHX : Amazon.com : Automotive

EDIT: It's actually the same guy.

Since most engine happen at the worst time in the worst places and most often from fuel related issues adding cheap filters sounds like you are asking for problems in the future. From my experience you will find out why the China's filter is so much cheaper at very bad inopportune time. At which time it will cost you twice as much to fix the problem then if you did it correctly from the beginning. just saying...

Roll Tide, not to be argumentative, but if the China filter and the Racor filter are the same micron size, and the filter canisters (for lack of a proper term) are both sealed units (once the filter is inside), how is one going to operate any different from the other?

IMO it's not likely that the cheaper filters will collapse or fail in some other way, will they?

I'm just asking. I have Racors on my boat and buy the filters from a source other than Racor. They're Racor branded but cheaper than what Racor sells their filters for.

I've boated for many years and have used "second source" filters rather than the premium brands for all those years and have never had a problem.

Just asking.........

Even the Griffin's out of Texas are considerably cheaper not sure why, but I love to talk to someone who has used them, before I part with my $$

Not sure if fuel filters are rated the same as hydraulic filters, but, in the hydraulic industry you will see filters rated by micron and Beta ratio. The micron states the largest particle that can fit through. the Beta ratio is how efficient the filter is. In the hydraulic industry, top of the line manufactures are over 99% efficient while aftermarket manufacturers are somewhere in the 60% efficiency range. They have the same micron rating, fit in the same housing, but the material used and the density of the material used vary widely. As an example, we have 8 hydrostatic test stands in our remanufacturing department. we use three 5" diameter 10 micron spin on filters connected in series that we changed every 3 months whether they went into bypass or not. I changed to a top line manufacturer that fit on the same housing. My test room supervisor came to me after installing these and told me they clogged up in an hour. We had to replace the elements four times before they would not clog and go into bypass. both filters were 10 micron; the top of the line cost double what the other cost and more than worth it for me
John
MS390

Tony Athens of Seaboard Marine sources a good selection of filter assemblies, and has quite a lot to say about setting up filtration systems. He is a major supporter of and contributor to BoatDiesel and has a lot of information on his site, Seaboard Marine - Custom Marine Diesel Repower Specialists. Before adding Racors you might take a look at his information.

I'll second having a serious read of Tony Athens thoughts.
I just bought a set of filters from him although not yet installed.
Regardless, get his telltale needle vacuum guage for the filters.

Cheap filters may fit the housing, but as noted johnma says the Beta Ratio speaks to efficiency. I buy the Racor elements hoping that Parker Hannifin knows their stuff vs a low price - non speced by PH - Chinese alternative.

But for a new filter setup, I'd go spin ons in a heart beat - 3 stage setup per T Athens and as mentioned by Clark Leighs.

GFC

My thinking is inline with Johnma. check out the PDF that is on the racor website. It provides a list of reasons of why not to buy cheap filters. I am all for saving cash were possible but I think you get what you pay for in this case.

http://www.parker.com/literature/Racor/7501_Rev_H_Marine_Filtration_Systems.pdf

I bought a Griffin from Diesel Filters direct out of Texas for a fuel transfer polishing system. More or less a Racor 900 clone. OUTSTANDING customer service. I ordered the wrong adapter and the guy sent me two of the right ones with no money changing hands.

Now that you have your griffin filters. if you wanted to use the racor 900 would it fit ? It if does that may address all the questions. If every is concerned that the Griffin filter might be inferior, you could save $600 on the difference in the housing and buy all Racor filters...then everyone is happy.

Just finished reading Tony outline on filtering and while I agree with his basic idea of starting off with a big filter and working your way down in filter sizes, no where in the article did I see anything about having redundant filters that you could change from one to the other on the fly. The flaw as far as I could see, and I'm telling you I don't claim to know anything here about filtering fuel was. When you are running and one of your inline filters does get a clog, you need to change it. So that engine stops. If you take his line to heart, maybe you put two of his filters in front of racor twin and never need to switch between the two racors.


I must have missed something, but one of his installs he showed close to ten filters, I flat don't have that much real estate for a filter farm or bank to afford it. I guess for my money I'd try and start with a switchable two filter system per engine with a 20mic first and a 10mic in the back up and if I have to switch because I'm picking up crap, change the filter fast and switch back to the 20microm.

If that runs fine for a while, then I'd step down to a 10 in both filters. And if I can get the Racor filter in the Griffin tank, go that route.

If you see a major flaw here please point it out, I love to learn here and not paying my mechanic or the fuel dock.

Thanks for all the input

Not clear what you are replacing but have you considered simply adding an additional Racor to your existing unit, with a 3-way valve to switch between the 2 units? We did this partly because of cost and partly because it was easier to position 2 separate units rather than one larger duplex unit
Plus as indicated previous, it is usually pretty easy to pick up a used Racor on Ebay.

So where did you find your 3 way valves ? I need to pick up 2 new filters to add to the two racor 1000's I have now. Guess my thought was but one completed package and build the other one out of the existing gear I have, if I could do it at a reasonable price.

Dswizzler said:

Now that you have your griffin filters. if you wanted to use the racor 900 would it fit ? It if does that may address all the questions. If every is concerned that the Griffin filter might be inferior, you could save $600 on the difference in the housing and buy all Racor filters...then everyone is happy.

Click to expand...

The Racor filters fit perfectly in the Griffin filter body, that is why I bought it, only one filter size on board. No issues. It is not identical to my 1988 Racor 900 but very, very close. I'm no engineer but I assume they are copying improvements to the 900 series.

In any case, I'm a happy camper.

Apollo 3 way valves from Grainger

APOLLO Bronze Ball Valve, 3-Way, FNPTxFNPT, 1/4 In - Ball Valves - 1CKF9|7060101 - Grainger Industrial Supply

Interesting discussion, but not being a Racor user I have a question:

Assuming the Racor style filter is your primary filter and you are using 20 mic disposable media filters;

if the China filters are not as efficient as OE Racor filters and are passing contaminates. . . wouldn't you see those contaminates caught in your 2 or 10 mic secondary filters? If that is true, then your secondary filters should be showing blockage?

Has anybody experienced that?

Dswizzler said:

If you take his line to heart, maybe you put two of his filters in front of racor twin and never need to switch between the two racors.

Click to expand...

You're close. If you do nothing more than install a big Fleetguard (30u) in front of your Racors (10u) followed by the on engine you will have a very good 3 stage filter system. Your DD92s circulate a lot of fuel, thus providing a very good continual fuel filtering, likely a greater rate than most do with their onboard fuel polishing systems.

Unless you begin building up a vacuum. your Fleetguard would easily last for 12 months or 10,000+ gallons. Many fuel docks use a 30u Fleetguard mounted right on the pump/line. I've heard many of the dock guys say it will last for months. In my industrial experience we routinely did a filter change every week on the tank farm or every 25,000 gallons or so

Unless you travel where bad fuel is common, redundancy for each stage of filtering with all sorts of valves needlessly complicates things with greater potential for air leaks and engine shutdowns.

My 2 cents worth ------

Interesting. My secondary filter is 2 microns. My twin Racor elements primary elements are 2 micron, as recommended by my local Perkins supplier. I inadvertently installed some Napa 10 micron filters on the stbd Racors. I was planning to replace them with 2 micron elements. Is this overkill? (85 HP Perkins 4.236)

(Sorry for the creep, Mark!)

Mark, I don't know the brand of my primary filter housing, but I suspect it's not Racor. However, Racor elements fit in the unit perfectly.

I've dual Racor filters for my single engine. I use one at a time. When one fails to provide enough fuel for full power, I switch to the second one.



P.S. I use two-micron filters.

The proper tank to engine switching valves , two sets of passages switched together , for feed and return, are sometimes hard to find and boat $toopid priced.

A simple solution is a pair of 3 way valves with a connector to gang them together .

Move one , the other gets moved too.

KISS and cheap.

FlyWright said:

Interesting. My secondary filter is 2 microns. My twin Racor elements primary elements are 2 micron, as recommended by my local Perkins supplier.

Click to expand...

With the Perkins moving a total of probably 3 gph, any size of filter opening should be fine. On a DD92 series with 50+gph moving around the engine filter body size and aperture opening is a bigger issue.

The points made by Mark on switching filters go back to the possibility of construction debris in his tanks.

Fluid filtering 101, and recommended by Racor and all other filter suppliers is sequential filtering. Whether we need sequential or not on our toy boats where some use no more than a few hundred of gallons of fuel per year is debatable.

Look at the size of the fuel filter on your car, moving far more fuel than most do on their boats and you can quickly grasp the capacity overkill most of our vessels have. Even on your big diesel pickup using fuel from same supplier as fills your boat tank, look at how small the filters are, point being any half way sensible filter arrangement will suffice on our small recreational vessels unless you punch a hole in your deck fuel cap of course.

will suffice on our small recreational vessels unless you punch a hole in your deck fuel cap of course.


What deck fuel fill cap?

As for fuel filtering 101 I did not mean to disagree with the idea of sequenced filters in, my only question is how many are required. I have the filter on the DD692 block and before that I have my racor 1000. If I have a pair of the 1000's that are hot swappable in case one gets clogged and the one on the block is that enough ? I do have a pressure gauge on each filter, but I suspect if I shake something loose from my tank it will get caught on the first filter.

Just alittle background, I have only put a few hundred hours on these engines in the past two years, in the calm waters of the CA Delta, but shortly expect to begin taking this out the Golden Gate where I expect the water will not be a gentle. The boat with the existing set up has run up and down the coast from SF to San Diego at least 4 times that I'm aware of, but this will be my first outing to the big water.

Just trying to get my ducks in a row

I am going with the Dual-Dual approach that Tony suggest - partly because Fleetguard is available all over the world (even China - not sure about Racor) and partly because its a simple set-up, where one has to monitor the gauge and deliberately make the decision (based on knowledge) when to change from one set of filters to the other set.

If this check is done hourly (as it should) then a single engine boat should not end up without fuel....

>If I have a pair of the 1000's that are hot swappable in case one gets clogged and the one on the block is that enough<

Works for my much smaller 6-71.

The problem is when you begin to run again IF gunk is in the tank it will break loose in large motion times and may plug the primary.

Not a big deal if it takes hours and you have a cars or two of filters , a very big deal if its every 30 min.

Happily the DD flow so much fuel that the usual tank will be far cleaner after a few hours than at the trips start.

A tank clean out should be installed and a wooden spoon or scraper used.

Dockside tank cleaning service is as useful as winning the lottery in Kenya you never entered.