New Racor 500MA as main filter

Having had two episodes now when a plugged filter left me dead in the water, and one of them even after fully cleaning my fuel tank as I reported here, I finally have had enough and installed a new Racor 500 MA as my primary filter and plumbed the old Racor 220 as my backup. I can switch them on the fly. I also installed the vacuum gauge on the 500, and at cruising RPM it now sits at only 1mm Hg. I'm so damn fastidious about maintenance that it drives me batty to have ever had a fuel filter problem under way.

The source of that hair like stuff must have been from a tank of fuel I picked up somewhere. My pet theory is that the fuel station had a rat get into the tank and die, and those hairs got put into my tank, as there is simply no way in the world for hairs to get in my tank otherwise. And unlike dirty fuel, which would simply clog the filter, those hairs actually accumulate around the check ball and physically block the flow of fuel before it ever gets to the filter. DAMN HAIRS.

So, with the two filters now, I can switch over on the fly and deal with whatever is causing grief in the  other.

The new Racor 500MA

The set up with a view of one of the two three way switches that lets me switch filters on the fly.