So I bought a load of water that was apparently mis-labled as "diesel" this Christmas from a nice station outside Chicago. Silly me, seeing as how it was a green handle at a gas station on a pump labeled "high flow diesel", I can see how a simple peasant such as myself was confounded thinking it was truck fuel and not the finest soy bean slurry over ice available in the Midwest. It was like the 12-day of Christmas from hell... five days below zero, four times laying under the truck, three WIF drains, two frozen fuel filters, and one diesel shower on the side of I-55. So my new plan is to carry more diesel so I can just not buy fuel anywhere in the State of Illinois in it's entirety (really I just want more capacity), so to make that practical as I don't plan on starting to burn 100 gallons a week to keep the aux tank fresh.... I figure more filters is better.

The Valve: US Solid Motorized Ball Valve, 1/2" full port with self-return. Not a solenoid valve so it doesn't stay energized continually, once it's opened it's supposed to pull significantly less power and then close automatically once power is removed, as in the switch is turned off or the truck is turned off (when ran off an aux switch). It works on the bench, you add power and it opens, you take away power and it closes.
US Solid 1/2" Motorized Ball Valve


The Pump: Facet Dura-Lift 40222. 33gph free-flow, 9-12psi, rated for gas/E85/diesel/bio. The points that made me pick it were 120" self-priming dry lift, and a 4-hour dry run time, so it shouldn't have trouble pulling through a water separator then pushing through a filter while maintaining a reasonable flow rate, and if I happen to suck the bottom of the tank out it won't burn up in a matter of seconds, which was a primary complaint on cheap 12V pumps like the little Mr Gasket. This pump is apparently similar (very similar? ...OEM supplier?) to the one used in Carrier Transicold reefers, so it should be rated to continual use and more that up to the task of emptying an aux tank. I've seen IDI guys use it as a replacement lift pump, seeing some of their videos is actually what started the wheels turning in terms of this pump being able to handle the level of filtration I was looking for.
Facet Dura-Lift 40222


The Filters: Currently a WIX 33123 water separator 12 micron 15gpm enhanced cellulose, then a WIX 33528 2-micron high efficiency rated at 12-15gpm. These are the "test filters", if this goes live the water separator is going to change to a self-venting one that can fit the 1"-12 filter head I have, the primary one will either be this WIX or an actual CAT filter of the same spec. I prefer the head on the 33528, it's a 1"-12 stem and has an inlet and outlet port on each side for better mounting options. The final setup might use a water separator that fits this head depending on mounting space. I've read the Cat literature I can find, there doesn't seem to be anything special about the water separator filters themselves that justifies not using the Wix filters for that. The goal of the filter setup is that I can buy a load of 45-75gals of fuel and burn it at roughly the rate I do now (min 30gal/mo) without adverse consequences. Basically drive the truck 400-500 miles, pump over a full main tank, then fill up the aux back to full. I'd keep the aux tank close to full typically and use some flavor of treatment in it, but that should be within the shelf life of diesel and won't cause significant water accumulation issues in the tank that the aux filter rig can't handle before the fuel hits the main tank and real filters on the truck.
WIX 33123
WIX 33528

(links aren't where I bought stuff, just convenient to find when I wrote this)

 

The Test Rig:

I have a 5-gallon yellow can that started with about 2 gallons of wet diesel (aka soy bean slurry) in it, plus it has at least 2oz of free water from two HFCM drains (1oz set the WIF light each time), plus whatever free water was at the bottom of my aux tank when I completely drained it for storage. The intake tube was in the bottom of the can, the return line just stuck into the can and sprayed onto the side of the container to complete the loop.

I used a 13.8V power supply to run the pump, yes the alligator clips are sketchy but I got proof-of-concept for the setup and I'll make the wiring all pretty when I mount the whole mess. I built it up one piece at a time, just the pump, water sep after pump, water sep before pump, then the final water sep-pump-primary filter setup in the picture. Flow didn't seem to change with each change, but I didn't do any form of measuring flow other than just watching it come out of the hose.

The filters stripped out all the water from the can over about 15-20 minutes of run time, I was sucking up water dropplets off the bottom of the can with the intake tube. I added about 8oz of water to the mix to stress test the setup, and it might have been too much for the Wix filter. I think the pump sucked up pretty much pure water until it cleared it from the bottom of the tank, I got 4-6oz out of the water sep and another ~2oz from the 80-micron pre-filter on the pump. If anyone has looked in the bottom of an aux tank, I don't think this is really that extreme of a test, so I'm somewhat concerned that either the WIX 33123 isn't good enough, or if the fact that I forced it to block 10+oz of free water in half an hour saturated the media. The self-venting WF10045 filter that will ultimately replace the 33123 uses synthetic media, maybe it will be more efficient.

After abusing the water separator, I ran the whole thing for 45 minutes straight. The pump was warm but not hot, flow looked the same, but let me tell you the fuel in the can was crystal clear. When I started it was cloudy and you couldn't see the intake tube at the bottom of the can without shining a flashlight up from under. At the end it was entirely transparent. I should have pulled a sample from before, but after it looks like the clarity that comes out of the HFCM wen you drain it for a filter change (aka not for water problems). It SHOULD be clean, the secondary filter on this setup is rated at least nominally the same as our secondary filters and after 45 minutes the two-ish gallons should have been recycled and polished several times over.


The Next Step:
The valve is currently going on to a 45-gallon aux tank that will not use this filter setup, it's meant to be filled and drained almost immediately and won't sit long enough to gather water on its own (so long as the gas station doesn't provide water free of charge ). When I need to put that tank back into a truck I'm going to make a harness to wire the valve to Aux #1 using quick connects on each end so that gravity flow is functional. Then I'll put the whole test contraption into the truck bed and run a test of siphoning out of the tank fill neck and into a marked container to roughly check flow and see if this whole stupid contraption is going to work.

For a fill neck solution, I'm planning on taking the neck out of the second truck and seeing if a local shop can weld a 1/2FPT bung into it. My truck has the RDS gravity kit in it already, but for the other one I don't want to cut any hoses if i don't need to. At that point each truck will have an Aux #1 quick connect for the wiring harness and all the holes to mount the tank and run the hose, so the 45-gal tank will be easily removable/swapable. That was the plan for that tank all along

THEN I'll find something like an RDS 72537 transfer tank/toolbox combo, and create the full system. That final build will come later, I'm still thinking through mounting the pump inside the toolbox and the filters on the outside. I'm not considering frame mounting because one of the original goals is that the tank/toolbox/pump/filter combination is removable as a sin

Close-up of the final test setup:


Mock-up of the in-box pump setup and the Cat filters:

 

Boring video, but it works:

Motorized ball valve on the old 45-gal vertical tank, each of the two trucks will have quick connects wired into Aux 1 and Aux 2, so each can run the gravity tank, the pumped tank, or the gravity drain on the pumped tank (as a backup for pump failure mainly):


Male NPT welded into the fillneck. I went to the guy's shop intending on putting a female bung into the neck but the guy didn't have a step bit that could punch a big enough hole, and this is what he had for a steel fitting. Next neck I'll drill before I go. When I get a chance I'm going to replace the fuel hose I cut for the RDS kit and pull that thing, I don't need the float valve in it and I want a larger port for the pumped setup. So I'll leave the RDS one installed but blocked like it is now until I can change out the hose. Don't do things in a hurry, do them right the first time:


Fuel neck installed and hooked up up under the truck:


Valve installed on tank in truck, two angles to show clearance. The grommet I ordered did not fit the hole, so I punched it up a size and ordered the next size up, it'll either get temporarily covered by a cut grommet/hose, or the parts will come in before it's used:

 

The big tank has arrived. UWS TT-85-COMBO, 85 gallon L-shaped tank with a chest tool box permanently attached. I lose the gooseneck ball because I have a short bed, but I don't have a trailer that uses it currently so no loss. The 75 gallon version of this combo is short enough that I would have cleared the ball, but the point of this adventure was to get stupid-big fuel volume. Build wise it's very solid, tighter than my 10 year old Weatherguard but I don't think the paddle locks are nearly in the same league protection wise.

Looks pretty snazzy when it's polished:

 

The valve and pump/ filter setup on the new box:

 

Very interesting bryan,i think you will save injectors,pumps,filters,downtime,stress, should payoff fast.