Gas Tank Crud...Anybody?

[Bushwacker]

My Seafari has a 50 gal aluminum and since I put it back into service I have had nothing but problems with the old varnish and sediment clogging up filter after filter. I am looking for a pre-filter settling bowl to let the big chunks settle out and not clog the filter during high demand. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

You might try a Racor, which has a sediment bowl with a drain on it, with a 30 micron filter, along with a finer 10 micron filter on engine, downstream of the Racor. The Racor bowl can be drained, removed and cleaned without disturbing the filter element. I recently read an article on the subject by Steve D'Antonio in Passagemaker Magazine that recomended the course + fine serial filter set up for diesel trawlers that have very large fuel tanks. Theory is that the first filter will not clog as quickly, since it doesn't have to stop the really small stuff, and the fine filter will work better because it's not getting clogged with the bigger chunks.

Another option would be to just pull the tank and clean it, as it's not that hard to pull the tank on a Seafari. Might be worth doing if you've never inspected it. I was glad I did that when I got my boat, even though it was only 3 years old at the time . . . I found a brass nut on the support board underneath the tank that evidently fell in there at the factory before tank was installed! Galvanic action was eating through the aluminum where the nut was contacting it! Would have gone all the way through in another couple of years if I had not caught it! I ground out corrosion with Dremel tool, repaired with Marine-Tex and painted entire tank with zinc-chromate epoxy primer. I pulled it 34 years later when I repowered to clean it and replace all the hoses, and the original tank is still in good shape!