Dual Racors. One or both when running?

The bowls aren't there to stop the boat from burning, they are there to give you time to either fight the fire of get off the boat. They are designed to give you a couple of minutes.

Here is a picture of my dual Racor set up. Mine is a single engine, one line in from the tanks, one line out to the engine, the selector to one or the other filter. So far so good.

"If you have a fire severe enough to burn through the bowl with out the flame shield, your boat is already toast. Silly feature."

Probably true , but if the insurance adjuster dives to inspect the boat, after the fire , he may be able to keep the company check book closed.

Here is a question, how many are with vessels where Yuove never had bad fuel or plugged filters?

That asked, if you are bothered with prematurely plugged filters as a common issue, is it time to clean the tanks?

Last but not least, on a smaller diesel are you better off to have a single Racor 900 or two smaller 500s?

alfamike said:

I think I will join you guys now & also remove the flame shields at the bottom of each filter.

I Agree that it is probably more important to see exactly what is on the bottom each time I do an ER check.

I agree with the decision weighing the risk and deciding it was more important for me to see exactly what is on the bottom of the fuel filter each time I do an ER check.

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Mike, I said that I agreed with Richard's rational for Dauntless. Keep in mind however that he was doing ocean crossings in rough weather. Regular checks of the fuel bowls in a variety of conditions are a lot more critical in that situation than in mine where I have good fuel, inland water, and am in range of assistance if needed. I won't be removing the heat shields from my bowls because I don't have the same need that Richard did.

sunchaser said:

Last but not least, on a smaller diesel are you better off to have a single Racor 900 or two smaller 500s?

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Good question. Being ignorant, I'll answer the question.

I would go with dual 500s with a small diesel. I think dual 500s with plenty of filters would provide more security than a single 900 with plenty of filters.

On my sailboat with a 56hp Yanmar, I only had a single 500. Even though I only purchased fuel yearly, I never had any filter issues. Eventually I added a vacuum gauge but I also changed out the primary and secondary filters yearly.

Single 900.

Capt.Bill11 said:

Single 900.

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Why Bill?

sunchaser said:

Here is a question, how many are with vessels where Yuove never had bad fuel or plugged filters?

That asked, if you are bothered with prematurely plugged filters as a common issue, is it time to clean the tanks?

Last but not least, on a smaller diesel are you better off to have a single Racor 900 or two smaller 500s?

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In 17 years with this boat I've never had a fuel issue. I'm on the Great Lakes so I don't know if that changes things.

dhays said:

Why Bill?

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Because I like the benefit of the much larger surface area of the 900 over the 500.

An engine shutting down due to bad fuel is a pretty rare occurrence. The 900s large surface area along with reasonable element change out times makes that an even rarer occurrence.

Now for a boat that is really going to do some real offshore cruising or out in the boonies stuff, I'd have fault 900s.

I run a single 900 on my 450 Cummins. I'm fine with it, but do understand the benefit of duals. Switching on the fly is a nice feature.

On mine I notice filter clogging by a slight wavering of rpm and boost. This occurs long before I lose significant performance or get a shutdown. In fact I have never had a shutdown. When it starts rpm wavering it only slowly gets worse over even a 100nm, so plenty of time to change element. And this is with usually 10mic elements. No water, no slime, just asphaltenes (I think, black stuff). Usually can go through 500 to 1000gal before this happens.

Just finished the new 75500 MAX 10 install this afternoon. Took a bit of doing to mate the assembly to my old boat fittings but it worked out. I feel more comfortable with this setup over the single system. The 120 GPH rating is a bit of overkill for an engine drawing less than 10 wide open but I wanted the surface area.

As per all the posters here I'll be running on one. Might switch the elements to 30 micron when I change them out eventually. Not much point having 10 micron primary and secondary systems.