Alternative to polishing fuel. Here are some ideas: Swap your old fuel stale diesel for fresh. When I started to have problems with starting and worried about dirty fuel, I used the onboard electric fuel pump to pump the fuel out of the tank and into jerry cans that I gave to the landscaper at work. Two jerry cans (10 gallons) did the trick. I cleaned the grungy jerry cans with gasoline and let air dry. Finally added fuel treatment and fresh diesel fuel from a busy trucker's fuel stop, thinking I was getting the freshest fuel possible. I filled my clean jerry cans through a screened funnel and poured that through a screened funnel into my boat. Ran the electric fuel pump for a while, before changing the filters. Possibly $40 in fuel is less than changing a lot of filters. We only daysail, no long motoring trips, and filters are designed to process hundreds of gallons of fuel, so I went 7 years before changing filters, and they were still clean enough to go several more years.
Lessons learned: 1) run your boat until the tank is closer to 5 gallons before trying this method. If the boat is out of the water, you can place the jerry cans under the boat, use a squeeze bulb fuel pump to transfer the fuel out of the tank thru the speedo thruhull and into the jerry cans. Make up a shutoffvalve on the hose so you can control the fuel at the jerry can. 2) before pumping the tank, open the fuel tank, pull the sensor/float, and use a sqeeze bulb fuel line to suck any debris from the bottom of the tank. Keep some fuel, at least an inch, in the tank to help the process. The old fuel does not need to be thrown out, it will work fine in home heating tanks, diesel tractors, etc. Now I avoid fuel docks because they don't move the fuel enough. Instead, I hand carry 5 gallons at a time, to my boat. Chuck Resolute 1990 C&C 34R Atlantic City, NJ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Frank" <n...@comcast.net> To: cnc-list@cnc-list.com Sent: Friday, January 24, 2014 5:03:50 PM Subject: Re: Stus-List Advice Wanted: Cleaning out a Fuel Tank C&C 30mkII Kevin, My fuel tank is very difficult to remove or even look into from the sensor access. After I “polished” my fuel several times, the first time I was offshore in rough conditions, I replaced my fuel filter (Racor 500) five times in 100 miles of engine operation. The only thing that really cleaned the fuel tank was several treatments using the tank cleaner/conditioner made by Star Brite. The first treatment, five years ago, filled the sediment bowl on my fuel filter nearly full with gunk. Shortly after that I have removed some more gunk but now I rarely get anything in the sediment bowl. I’ve been in some very rough offshore conditions but have never had a problem with fuel filters since the original treatment. Good luck, Frank Noragon C&C 38LF, S/N:001 Rose City Yacht Club Portland, Oregon From: Kevin Driscoll Sent: Friday, January 24, 2014 1:22 PM To: Dennis C. ; cnc-list@cnc-list.com Subject: Re: Stus-List Advice Wanted: Cleaning out a Fuel Tank C&C 30mkII All very good questions and answers. My thoughts are that I am going to do what I can from the access hatch (ie remove old fuel and what solids I can), change the filter, fill er' up again (with Stabil added) and call it good. I may buy some star brite, whic Practical Sailor gave two thumbs up to. Since I am not experiencing any issues at the moment, I will save the professional cleaning if/when they arise. Best, Kevin C&C 30mkII Portland, OR _______________________________________________ This List is provided by the C&C Photo Album http://www.cncphotoalbum.com CnC-List@cnc-list.com
_______________________________________________ This List is provided by the C&C Photo Album http://www.cncphotoalbum.com CnC-List@cnc-list.com
