Here's the deal:
Last fall I winterized the boat with George's recommendations, including Sta-Bil in fuel.I left the tank about half full.
Two weeks ago, topped off the tank, ran it 110 statute miles, ran super. 2 days ago topped off the tank with 55 gallons of fuel and big problemo.
The engine wouldn't run, changed both the spin-on fuel filter and another expensive ($50) fuel filter and found evidence of water/gel in the fuel. Engine (496 Merc) still wouldn't run after changing both filters, suggesting that there's water in the tank reacting with the new mixture of (10%) ethanol at the gas pumps. Both fuel purchases this year were from the same place, and they say no other problems with their fuel.
The marina will soon try to run the engine from a remote 3 gallon tank to see if the problem originates in my tank. If so, that opens up a whole new BIG can of worms because 3 years ago I paid eight thousand dollars to fix water in fuel problems with this boat. Both Formula and Merc said it wasn't their fault. But now, if this turns out to be the same damn thing, it's pretty obvious to me that there is a fault with the fuel tank or the engine installation.
So, have any of you had ethanol problems this year? Also, what do you think of these two problems being related?
thanks, Peter
Last fall I winterized the boat with George's recommendations, including Sta-Bil in fuel.I left the tank about half full.
Two weeks ago, topped off the tank, ran it 110 statute miles, ran super. 2 days ago topped off the tank with 55 gallons of fuel and big problemo.
The engine wouldn't run, changed both the spin-on fuel filter and another expensive ($50) fuel filter and found evidence of water/gel in the fuel. Engine (496 Merc) still wouldn't run after changing both filters, suggesting that there's water in the tank reacting with the new mixture of (10%) ethanol at the gas pumps. Both fuel purchases this year were from the same place, and they say no other problems with their fuel.
The marina will soon try to run the engine from a remote 3 gallon tank to see if the problem originates in my tank. If so, that opens up a whole new BIG can of worms because 3 years ago I paid eight thousand dollars to fix water in fuel problems with this boat. Both Formula and Merc said it wasn't their fault. But now, if this turns out to be the same damn thing, it's pretty obvious to me that there is a fault with the fuel tank or the engine installation.
So, have any of you had ethanol problems this year? Also, what do you think of these two problems being related?
thanks, Peter