Quote:
Originally Posted by cdavisdb
. . . Question: how do you know that the fuel you bought that showed no water in your filter was pure Rec90 and not contaminated with enough E10 to absorb any water?
I'll check the vent hose arrangement and fuel cap Oring. What is that "special inverted U fitting on the vent hose?
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Good question! At the time I had not heard about Rec90 gas being contaminated with ethanol, so I was not checking for that, even though I have a tester for it. Now that I know that Rec90/"pure gas" has been found to be not so pure after all, I will be checking ALL the gas I buy before I put it in the boat!
BTW, here are some tips for using the ethanol tester. Beside the
calibrated test tube, you need a container of water (I use the bicycle bottle of drinking water I always have on the boat) and a container for some gasoline (I use a squeeze bottle condiment container like you find with mustard/ketchup in restaurants). You fill the test tube up to the "0%" line with water, and then to the FUEL line with gas, put the cork in it and shake it up. Any ethanol in the gas will combine with the water and settle out at the bottom and increase the quantity of "water" at the bottom of the test tube, which is calibrated in 5% increments above the 0% line, allowing you to read the % ethanol directly. If there is no ethanol in the gas, the water/gas interface will remain at 0%. I typically found ethanol content was between 7 and 10% back when I was using E-10 gas. West Marine has a
cheaper ethanol tester, but it looks pretty small and isn't too finely calibrated.
The plastic inverted U vent fitting is shown in pic below on the left next to the the original fitting, which would allow water into the vent line. Don't remember who made it but it had a clever plastic "catch bottle" that clipped to the outside of the fitting that would catch any fuel that spit out the vent during refueling! The plastic fitting eventually broke however, so I replaced it with a
similar round fitting with a 90 degree elbow in it. I installed it with the elbow pointing aft and used a longer vent hose with a 360 degree loop in it up in the Seafari's raised coaming several inches above the vent fitting. Seems to do a good job of keeping water out of the tank, and I can still use the catch bottle!