Anyway, I've been looking for a reasonably priced way to handle all the water & crud build-up that seems to end up in boat tanks these days. I'm redoing my LaConner and have come up with the following system using stuff from the heavy truck and fuel dispensing world.
The filter on the left is primarily a water separator, its made by Baldwin and it is the first stage of the system. It doesn't have a paper element inside. It is built with a 200 micron stainless steel mesh screen instead of paper. It's job is to catch all the big junk and it will likely never need to be replaced due to clogging unless I really take on some bad fuel. The main thing it provides is lots of water catching capacity and an industrial style drain on the bottom so I can maintain better control of h2o trying to make its way to the engine. Its part number is Baldwin BF7759 and I got it from Associated Diesel http://www.adiesel.com/ for $40.
The white filter on the right is the second stage, it also has very large capacity and it also has a drain for any water that might get past the Baldwin. It is a conventional paper element but its filtration is better than average at 12 microns which is a pretty small particle when you are talking gasoline systems. The regular Merc type spin-ons are 30 micron though Sierra is now selling a 10 micron filter but IMO its too small for a filter that size with that fine an element. This filter is made by Wix and its part number is 33418. I bought a half dozen of them from a guy on ebay for $9.00 ea. They are fairly common.
The mounting heads for the filters are also made by Wix, their part number is 24309 or they can be ordered by any Napa dealer, part number 4309. The two filters I described above will fit the OMC marine type spin-on mount heads (1"-12 threads) but the inlets and outlets on the OMC heads don't allow for direct coupling together of the heads with a pipe nipple like in the installed pictured above. I bought these filter heads from Fleet Filter http://www.fleetfilter.com/SearchResults2.asp for $25 ea
Anyway, I hope this is the answer. I work on quite a few boats and it seems that water in fuel messing up carbs & injection is the biggest problem these days. Its been a problem for me on my own boats too so we'll see if this system gives me a leg up.
