Ahoy fellow cruisers 🦜!
This will be one of the easiest upgrades on the series, but it can (or will) save you many headaches in the future 😵💫. It is so simple that we wonder why it doesn’t come like this from factory.
Today we will be talking about installing a fuel water separator for your dinghy outboard!
🤔 The why#
Dinghy outboard engines are more exposed than inboards, their fuel tanks included. It is not uncommon for a wave (or an abrupt stop) to get a truck-load of salt water into your dinghy, sometimes even flipping the tank upside down.
When this happens, it is crucial to:
- Make sure that no salt water made its way to the dinghy fuel tank;
- Clean all the connectors with fresh water to prevent early rusting;
- And if unsure, the best is to do a deep clean to the tank.
Regardless on how much you try, there will always be some water making its way into the dinghy. Besides water, there can be other contaminants already present in the fuel at the gas station. This becomes more and more of a concern, the more you roam around the world: not all fuel is made (or preserved) equal.
This is where having a filter comes into play. It is very normal for boats to come with ampre-filter and filter for the inboard diesel engines but, more often than not, the outboards are forgotten. They often come with just a little filter, that looks more like a strainer, inside the engine itself.
Ensuring that your fuel is as clean as possible will increase the performance and lifetime of your outboard, save you from future hassles, and also help you prevent some environmental damage as you won’t be burning contaminants (well, you won’t save yourself from burning fuel… if you want to go green, the best is to have an electric outboard).
✅ The solution#
The solution to the problem comes with the description of the problem itself. If the fuel can be bad, then you need to take out the bad stuff. This can be done with a filter.
LakeWizard published a great article reviewing multiple brands. We recomend you check it out to make your choice on the type of filter and casing.
As for us, we decided to go with a transparent casing so that we can see how the filter looks like and decide when it is time to change it.
🗜️ How to install#
Boating Magazine did an amazing tutorial on how to install these… diagrams included! We will thus avoid reinventing the wheel and just link you to it. You can, of course, always ask an outboard engine dealer to install it for you. They will have all the parts and tools to do so.
That’s it! Hope you enjoyed this first post of Pimp My Boat.
We bid you a jolly good day! 🍻
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