Cloudy fuel

[foreverstrung]

Hey All, this is an update on the poor running of my Mercury 200. In an earlier thread I stated that my 215 Explorer was only doing 18 mph last week, (my 1st real time out on her as I've got her home), well after following some suggestion, I pumped/drained some gas from the fuel line at the primer bulb. I disconnected a hose clamp here and pumped a few times and was only able to get about a quarter cup of gas. It was obviously clouded, but did not appear to separate.
Is this savable?

[foreverstrung]

So I read a thread that Wingtime posted about cloudy fuel and I guess I'll just have to douche this tank. I'll go ahead and rebuild the carbs too. This motor has had at least 4 hrs of dirty fuel run through it.

[kraw2]

A filter setup like this or a polisher can be made cheaply if you have allot of dirty fuel. It's a 12v fuel pump thru a Racor and back to the tank's fill. You would have to pull the sender and run the pick up hose down into the lowest part of the tank.

http://i1192.photobucket.com/albums/aa3 ... G_0055.jpg

[wingtime]

The problem with phase separated ethanol fuel is even with polishing the fuel is no good.  Yes you may get the goo out of it but it's not worth ruining an expensive motor to save a few bucks.  The fuel polisher guy that cleaned my tank told me there is NOTHING can be done to save it.  Not even the refineries can fix it.  He recirculated my fuel thru a huge filter system and it still looked like ice tea.  He then pumped it into a drum and hauled it off.

Keep in mind one of the reasons we have ethanol in fuel is the ban on the use of MTBE as a octane additive to fuel.   The ethanol does increase the octane rating of the fuel, so if you were able to filter out the water logged ethanol in the fuel the octane rating of your fuel is going to to be way low.