Fuel pickup tube

Last fall returning to my marina in my 48 LRC it appeared I was running out of fuel in my aft tank. I quickly switched tanks and all was fine. Later I filled the tank up and discovered it was only about half empty. I didn’t try it with my engines again but my diesel furnace, which runs on that tank began to flame out. I serviced the unit and had the same issue. I changed the filter in the Racor 500 and tried again. As I try to fire it I notice air bubbles entering the filter bowl. It appears that maybe the fuel fitting lost the pickup tube. So, can anyone tell me how that works? How does that pickup tube attach?

pick up tubes on mine are a copper pipe soldered into a steel plumbing elbow....need to figure out which pick up it is and unscrew it from the top of the fuel tank ....Pat

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Originally Posted by Capt Paul

Last fall returning to my marina in my 48 LRC it appeared I was running out of fuel in my aft tank. I quickly switched tanks and all was fine. Later I filled the tank up and discovered it was only about half empty. I didn’t try it with my engines again but my diesel furnace, which runs on that tank began to flame out. I serviced the unit and had the same issue. I changed the filter in the Racor 500 and tried again. As I try to fire it I notice air bubbles entering the filter bowl. It appears that maybe the fuel fitting lost the pickup tube. So, can anyone tell me how that works? How does that pickup tube attach?

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I think maybe it's too early to go after the pick-up. You said the diesel heater still failed to run after you filled the aft tank. You didn't mention if both motors were starving. You mentioned bubbles in one Racor. Presumably you have two. So, will one motor run off the aft tank and the other starve? If so, is the motor that starves supplied by the bubbly Racor?

The diesel heater feeds from where?
a. It's own dedicated fuel pick-up (Sounds like it does not)
b. Tee'd into an engine fuel supply line (If yes, which? Bubble side?)

Did you notice bubbles in the Racor prior to changing the filter? Is it possible you didn't get a good seal when you changed the filter?

I'd want to remove the heater fuel supply from the equation and then see if motor(s) run from aft tank.

The furnace fuel line is T’d into the engine supply. There were no provisions for a new pickup. Pretty sure my filter is fine. I have the exact same issue before and after changing it. I’m thinking it sounds like the pickup tube came off the plumbing fitting so it is sucking air. Not a bad idea to remove and plug the furnace fuel line and see if the engines still choke out. But might be just as easy to remove the fitting and see if there is a pickup attached.

Don't think it's a good idea to have anything "T" into the engine fuel supply.
It's not hard to add an additional pick up as there should be some unused ports on some of the tank fill plates.
We did have a pickup tube break off 6 or 8 inches from the bottom, not a hard fix to remove and replace the tube.

I’ll recheck but didn’t see any unused ports in the tank. I’m not really worried about it though, I haven’t had an issue in the last eight years with it so I don’t think that is now my issue.

This picture is of one of the cockpit tanks in my ‘70 45’. It would be near impossible for me to remove the pickup without cutting the deck. Even if I could unscrew the pickup pipe, the coarse filter at the bottom wouldn’t let it be removed without the entire tank plate coming off. If it’s of interest, the way I got a series of pictures of the inside of my tanks was to add a candelabra led bulb to a clamp light bulb holder minus the aluminum diffuser. The resulting light source readily fit inside the 1.5” fuel gauge hole. I’m not sure what it takes for the copper tube to be perforated as it lives in kerosene for all intents and purposes. To have enough water in the tank to corrode the copper would be highly unlikely IMO after all the water tank pick up was the same copper tube sans the coarse filter until I needed to upgrade the diameter to 3/4 for the headhunter pump.

That was a nice picture of a clean pick up screen.
Here is what I found while looking for my air bubble source many years ago;

You made turkey gravy?

Diesel clean added to diesel fuel loaded with water.
Old picture from when I learned about snake oil in my fuel, the hard way.

The flow caused a foaming action in the fuel flow that could be observed in the mud filters.

Never again will I ad any snake oil to my fuel. Just fix the issue and filter it out.