discolered primary fuel bowl

[davidpm]

The primary fuel filter bowl is about 25 years old.
It is glass but so discolored that it is solid black.

It is a little annoying to not be able to look into the bowl and see if their is water in the fuel.

How big a deal is this? Is this a must fix of just a minor annoyance?

[erps]

I had the same problem with my Racor filter. It's just crap in the bowl and it was easily to disassemble it and clean it out so it will be transparent again. It was an annoyance worth fixing.

[BarryL]

Hello,

If it were my boat I would correct the problem. As written by Ray, you may be able to just clean the bowl. If not, you may be able to buy a new bowl.

I like to be able to glance at the bowl and see if there is water or sediment in there.

Barry

[fullkeel7]

David,

Buy your wife a new sponge scratchy thingy for the kitchen sink, when use the old one with liberal amounts of Soft Scrub to clean the bowl. Works great and it won't scratch the bowl. More than likely it's been a while in between cleanings, so I'd check to see if the gasket or 'O' ring needed replacement.

[davidpm]

There is a bolt that is holding the glass on and I put as much force on it as is prudent. Any more and I have to be ready to replace it.

This unit is very old I better have a replacement unit before I tackle this one.

[erps]

It would help if we had an idea of the model/style of your filter. Some of the canister Racors have a spin-off see thru bowl and others are secured by a ring of screws IIRC. At any rate, the gunk that was on the interior surface of my bowl cleaned up with a paper towel. The exterior surface may have a tougher grime on it that might be cut with WD-40 and a soft cloth or the soft scrub method that fullkeel7 mentioned. Guess the next step would be to google your filter and see if you can find an exploded diagram that shows what keeps it together.