RCU Forums - Water in Fuel

Good days are days when you learn, I learned a lot today about fuel and water contaminated fuel! The short story went flying yesterday but the Super Bee II which has been very reliable would start and idle but would not accelerate. When the stick was advanced at anything more than a slow pace the engine would flameout. The day was somewhat warm 98F with a little humidity 75% our DA was > 4000 (std is 1200). We attributed the poor running to the "weather". Called Eric at Jet Central this AM to discuss with him. He was on the road but said he would make time at 1:00pm my time if I wished to run it and check parameters with him. I said sure (thanks Eric) and we ended the conversation. A short time later Eric called back, left me a message to check the fuel. I remembered a short while back I had purchased a Mr Funnel (http://www.mrfunnel.com/Mr._Funnel/Home.html). So thought I would try to run some fuel through it to see if there was anything in the fuel and did the funnel really work. The attached pictures tell the story ( I hope you can see the water fuel interface). That is the result of running about one gallon of the fuel from the five gallon fueler through the funnel. I could not believe what I saw. First that the supplier I got the kerosene from had that much water in his product or perhaps I picked up that much water in the fueler container somehow (not likely, two weeks old and not the first kero in the fueler). Second that the funnel thing worked. The water must slowly settle out and with the way I drive there probably was not much mixing (sloshing) of the fuel in the fueler as I drove to the field. So that first tank probably had a pretty high water content. Had I pumped that planes tank back in the fueler and shook the whole jug then refueled, the turbine might have run. The turbine runs fine now after the fuel has been "filtered". Thanks to Eric at Jet Central for having the answer and to Mark B. who used to work the fueling area for the local National Guard for his great explanation of water and Jet A. Disclosure BTW I do not sell funnels or care if you buy one. I am retired and hope to stay that way.....