hi i'm mike metal arrow with bow US magazine when the epa man they did non
evaporative tanks meaning fuel tanks that don't vent a few years back it had
a cascade of unintended consequences some of which were a real headache for
boaters so today we're going to show you how to fix one of those headaches with a
fuel demand valve with me is john ad president of a byc so John what is a
fuel demand valve well Mike a fuel demand valve is a
solution that was made by the industry to be able to combat the problems that
the new EPA tanks were having you can see we're at a 70 degrees spring day not
too hot out today and already in less than 30 minutes this tank has
pressurized and and really become quite rigid so in this situation if our fuel
line was hooked up from the tank to the engine as voters normally leave it we
would be pushing liquid fuel through the hose and then out through the carburetor
and either into the water or into the into the boat which are both bad
situations that's a serious situation correct so how do we fix this well we're
gonna install a fuel demand valve today very quick thing to do the way the fuel
demand valve works is it senses the pressure on the tank side keeps the
pressure on the tank side and when the engine calls for fuel it opens up and
allows fuel to freely flow to the engine sounds good alright before we get
started today I'd like to talk a little bit about safety when working around
fuel we all know that fuel is flammable and it's no different than when you're
working on a boat so there's a couple things I'd like to talk about first of
all you should have some kind of eye protection in case there's some kind of
spraying fuel that's always a good idea the second thing is to have some type of
containment so that when we have to drain the hose we have some place to put
the fuel that's not on the ground or else somewhere else out in the
environment the next thing is to make sure you're not smoking or there's no
opportunity for sparks around the the a work area things like hooking up a
jumper cable to the battery while you're working on this can create a spark that
could potentially result in a fire so make sure you're safe when you're doing
this project so I guess we indicated our first step is fairly simple we want to
make sure that we drain this entire hose of fuel you have two sides to this hose
one that goes to the engine and one that goes to the fuel tank they're separated
by a check valve in here so we have to drain each side independently okay so
we're gonna go ahead and get started we
provided a glass jar here which we know is fuel resistant make sure whatever
you're draining it into is fuel resistant and we'll start by undoing the
clips
so we've loosened our hose clamp and hopefully we'll be able to get our Quick
Connect clip out easily we're gonna go ahead and upend this and drain out any
fuel that we may have as we can see there's not too much in there
I'm squeezing the ball a little bit just to see if we can get the remaining fuel
out I'm like if you wouldn't mind grab me one of those paper towels here's to
you know this is also a pretty good time to take a look at that clear jar and
figure out if you have any water separation or issues in your in your
fuel as well just a little quick tip I
don't see anything separating looks like clean fuels now
we'll go ahead and do the other side she's putting the same hose clamp back
on we will be reusing the same hose clamp correct for this part of the
project now this side is the engine side so the squeeze ball will help you
evacuate the hose fairly quickly a lot more on this side absolutely well I'm
gonna fish that out with this all right now I'm actually gonna go ahead and
reinstall this Quick Connect so we don't end up with any drainage on the boat the
next step for us is to go ahead and we've pre-marked the manufacturer's
suggested six inches from the tank so see that's there and we're just going to
take a standard knife and go ahead and cut this hose our six inch mark
this is also important to note this is the new EPA hose that has a liner in it
and you'll see how the liner is separated from the inside of the hose
because of use when we install the demand valve we're gonna make sure that
it's inside that liner and that the liner isn't pinched up against the input
in the output of the fuel demand valve so this is our fuel demand valve and
really the important feature here is to notice that there is an arrow and the
arrow points toward the engine okay and our barb here is suited for the sized
hose that we're working with so let's go ahead and install this demand valve into
the fuel line that we've just cut the first thing we want to remember is to
put on our hose clamps nine times out of ten I will forget this and have to redo
it the next part is we already showed you our low permeation liner in here we
want to make sure that does not get stuck into the into the bar hose barb
here our arrow is going toward the engine the short piece we know is coming
off the fuel tank so let's go ahead and put that in nice and snug up against the
divan valve and we'll just go ahead and put the clamp on at this point it's
probably a great time to talk about hose clamps and the differences between them
you'll see we're using a fairly high-end hose clamp where the serrations are
actually not all the way through the metal band and they have a very nice
rounded edge so it doesn't cut into the hose also this is a 100% stainless steel
construction hose clamp meaning that our screw and every other part of it is 316
stainless which is a high-grade marine stainless steel I just like to do a
little pull test when we're done make sure we're seated correctly
things look good so now let's go ahead to the other side again installing the
hose clamp taking care not to interfere with that liner
slide it on as far as it'll go and just like the other side tighten it down and
again with a single pull test I know that I've done my job so here we have
the installed fuel demand off with our demand valve installed we're gonna go
ahead and put the system back together
and there we have it we have our fuel demand valve installed thanks for help
today John not a problem like thank you for more videos go to BoatUS.com/Magazine
Thanks for watching
you