*Shurhold Fuel Filter Funnel*
Bad Fuel In, Good Fuel Out
By: automatr
03 May 2009


Good clean fuel is essential for your gasoline or diesel engine to perform properly. A little debris or water in your fuel can stop your engine dead in its tracks, or worse, cause it to die a slow and painful death, perhaps when you need it the most. The marketing slogan for the Shurhold Fuel Filter Funnel is "Bad Fuel In, Good Fuel Out". Let's see if that's true.


Pictured below is a jar of gasoline (preserved with Pri-G), mixed with about an equal part of water. You can see that the water has settled to the bottom of the jar.


Now let's pour the gasoline and water mixture through the Fuel Filter Funnel into another jar and see what happens.


That's nice clean gasoline. Let's see what's left in the funnel. The water! In addition to the water, you can see the filter element that separates water and debris from the fuel.


The separation occurs because the filter material is extremely fine, allowing fuel to pass through, but not debris and water droplets which are larger. The funnel does its job very quickly - the filtering in these pictures took only about five seconds.


Another nice feature is that the shoulder of the funnel fits perfectly into the 2" hole in the top of a 55 gallon drum, providing a nice stable receptacle to your fuel pour into. If you are filling a 55-gallon drum using the fuel filter funnel, be sure to remove the small bung; the funnel fits so perfectly that air cannot escape as you fill the drum, and before long you will find fuel spilling out all over the ground.


This simple experiment shows that the Shurhold Fuel Filter Funnel does exactly what it says it will do, and quickly. With one exception. It will not filter out water that is chemically bonded to the ethanol that is sometimes added to gasoline. Your best bet to avoid this problem is to store only fuel that does not contain ethanol. In my area, several gas stations have signs out front that advertise "no ethanol".

The Fuel Filter Funnel works with gasoline, diesel and 2-cycle gasoline/oil mixtures.

There is an area in the bottom of the funnel that traps a tiny amount of fuel each time you use the funnel, perhaps an ounce. When you're finished using the funnel, simply dump this remaining fuel into a small glass vessel to get a better idea of the quality of your fuel source.

The Shurhold Fuel filter funnel is available from many online sources in 8.75 and 10" sizes (8.5"/3.5 gpm size shown) and three flow rates 3.5 gpm, 5 gpm and 15 gpm. The model tested for this article cost about 25 bucks. Prices for the larger, higher flow models can be as high as 65 bucks.

automatr



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