Do you fuel polish?

FF said:

I have seen far more fuel hassles from deck fill fittings than bad dock fuel.

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Yup! Change the orings annually on all fill caps. Couple of bucks every year keeps the undesirables out of water and fuel tanks.

Ted

Anyone operating a Alfa Laval unit ? Back in the day All steam turbine powered Navy ships operated almost continuously De Laval oil purifiers. Same designed centrifuge as the Laval, 32 stainless steel cones that caught the solids and a water seal that stripped off any water out of the oil. Problem was if you lost the water seal oil would take it's place and pour into the bilge. I was wondering if these Laval units have that same potential problem.

FF said:

I have seen far more fuel hassles from deck fill fittings than bad dock fuel.

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Fill fittings certainly have a large share. Bad dock fuel is not uncommon though in certain areas.

Be the first one to buy fuel in the spring from a small northern marina and you're at risk. Fuel delivery in remote areas of many countries or the out of the way marina that sells very little diesel.

My aunt had a small country store with two pumps out front. It was a town of 200 people and she sold very little fuel. We stopped buying there after having to be towed 60 miles home from her fuel.

BandB,
When I was in Alaska I bought all my fuel at the Texaco fuel dock in Ketchikan. You may consider that remote but they pump lots of fuel even in the winter.

Just to weigh in since I'm here .. don't polish fuel. I do use BioBore and Stabil.

HiDHo said:

Anyone operating a Alfa Laval unit ? Back in the day All steam turbine powered Navy ships operated almost continuously De Laval oil purifiers. Same designed centrifuge as the Laval, 32 stainless steel cones that caught the solids and a water seal that stripped off any water out of the oil. Problem was if you lost the water seal oil would take it's place and pour into the bilge. I was wondering if these Laval units have that same potential problem.

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On the last boat I ran we had one. If we lost the seal, which we never did, the drain was routed to a waste oil tank.

FF said:

I have seen far more fuel hassles from deck fill fittings than bad dock fuel.

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Or...
Recently while discussing the damage done to a charter boat windlass, the mechanic said his next job was dealing with a situation where "the wife" had filled the diesel tank with dock water.

"The wife."
Yeah, sure.

manyboats said:

BandB,
When I was in Alaska I bought all my fuel at the Texaco fuel dock in Ketchikan. You may consider that remote but they pump lots of fuel even in the winter.

Just to weigh in since I'm here .. don't polish fuel. I do use BioBore and Stabil.

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I found no problem in Alaska. Many of the docks are high volume and quite a few of the fuel pumps themselves are owned and operated by suppliers.

We've had enough range to be selective in our travels. Still it only takes once to ruin a perfect trip.

I put my tank fills right on the tanks, under a hatch in the cockpit. Makes it near impossible for water to get in the fill caps, and vents go to a large catch bottle. Since you can watch tank level when filling, no need to listen to the vents getting ready to spew.

Many many problems come from deck fill orings and crappy vent designs.

I've never gotten water in purchased fuel.

Ski in NC said:

I've never gotten water in purchased fuel.

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I have three times....well, me twice, my parents once.

1. Water in Gas for car purchased at my aunt's store. Car ended up towed 60 miles. I was very young so memory is really only what my parents told me.

2. Water in gas at lake purchased in March. Was able to put something, and I forget the brand and item although think it was an STP product, in the gas and get it to run it through. Engines ran very rough after filling and would cut off but with the additive they began running ok in less than 10 minutes.

3. A very small amount of water in diesel in Vallarta. We didn't fill, waiting for a later stop.

When I purchased my boat 5 years ago the PO tolf me that he had to have his fuel polished every year. The boat sat at the dock for 6 years with less than 20 hours a year on average. I installed a set of this multi stage filters on each engine:

SMX Multi-Stage Fuel Fueltration™

Not a single problem since they were installed and that was 1500 hours ago. I opened up my on-engine filters after 1000 hours and they were like new. A side benefit is the manual fuel pump attached to the filters that allows you to fill the filters from your tank as well as manually pumping fuel through the entire fuel systen in the event of an air lock.

Any boat I ever own from now on will have this system installed as the first filters downstream from the tanks.