mekozloski

Kind of a dumb question - for the Gen III's, where does the water that's separated from the fuel go? Does it just collect in the bottom of the plastic cup?

Raylar

Water in the fuel from tank will be sperated out of suspension by the pleated filter itself and remain in the filter housing around the outside of the filter and start up from the bottom. When the filter housing is full of water the high pressure fuel pump will start starving out and most likely the engine will stall. When totally overloaded with water some water laced fuel can get through and it will start raising havoc at the injectors and fuel rail.

Its also interesting to note that the new ethanol in fuels help water molocules pass thru the water sperating fuel filters and get into the EFI system and engine where they do addtional damage. Some 496's have expeirenced rusting inside the fuel rail which clogs the injectors and this rusting is being caused by excessive amounts of moisture in the fuel system after the fuel water seperators.

If you are getting your fuel at marinas or in the water fuel stations and you suspect a lot of water may be present you can install a much larger fuel water seperator in the system and they should have drain petcocks on the bottom where the water will collect and you can drain a small amount out to test.
Bottom line is to service your Cool Fuel III at least once before each season and then during the season as use hours and issues with water dictate.

Best Regards,
Ray @ Raylar

Revspan

Pulled mine today and they were pretty scuzzy. Does this look alarming? Engines seemed to run ok. Just look pretty nasty. Probably 70 hours and a few years. [ATTACH=CONFIG]561300[/ATTACH]

BUP

iTrader: (9)

the tan / brown paper filter brand new can come with black on it already out of the box. Some have no black on the paper filter media and some have black on it already straight out of the box brand new. most of your black in the pics came that way already brand new.

The new filter kits have 2 O rings to change out

And the big AND is some Merc Gen III have 3 filters internally. Just depends what you got.

A little bit of more info that is not mentioned is --- you dump the fuel from the basket in a clear jar to examine it closely for water and contaminates, If water in that basket sample --- you need to check your whole fuel system for water including the gas tank. FYI