As for dropping the tank or not, when my gas incident occurred, I had known for a while that I needed to replace my broken pickup foot, so I used the situation as an excuse to get the tank down and take care of both issues at once. Also, there was a "lesson" involved in my situation from which my son needed to learn, so the extra work involved in dropping and cleaning the tank had multiple purposes for me!

Aklim, I've replaced two BF1212 kits (both from ITP) with the PS120 setup. The PS120's clear canister housing is threaded into it's head's perimeter with the threads being on the outside of the top of the canister. The BF1212 elements screw on to a threaded post which is built into its respective head. The BF1212 threaded post is a completely difference diameter than the Racor threaded housing. Can't use either the Racor or Baldwin heads as replacements for each other, and same is true for the elements associated with either of those setups.

As for swapping out the systems, one for the other, it's not very complicated. Since you already have the Baldwin setup, the PS120, being shorter, will easily fit into the same install space with no trouble at all. The width of the heads are almost exactly the same size, but they bolt up differently from one another. I've seen two different mounting heads for the BF1212 application, one being mounted with bolts going vertically into the head unit, and the second with an angle-mounted head where there are three bolts at right angles to the filter element. The PS120 uses a horizontal arrangement which you can see in Colorado's picture where he used a square u-bolt for his mounting, which is rather neat and concise. I, on the other hand, simply used two bolts from my "store" of spare bolts, etc. in the garage. I like the cleaner look of Colorado's installation, but mine is just as secure, and I didn't have to go out to purchase new bolts.

The picture below shows the two BF1212 mounting heads I referred to as well as another shot of a PS120 with the two-bolt mounting approach for comparison.

 

Looks simple enough for a project day when it isn't 13 BELOW in the AM. Probably have to wait for a spring day where I have little to do and this fiasco is behind me. So far, it is but time will tell. Looking forward to running the tank empty and using fresh fuel to fill up and dumping the current filters.

 

If what you have is working, I wouldn't change it. The Baldwin filter has a flow rate of about twice what your pump can do.

 

Flow rate is not the only consideration... differential pressure (the amount of pressure drop across the filter element) is equally as critical, especially when you're working on the suction side of the pump. If the pressure drop is too great for the flow demand, you can create a vacuum in the pump suction (especially with volatile fluids which have low vapor pressures, like fuels). Whenever this vacuum condition exceeds the fluid's vapor pressure, you get pump cavitation and excessive wear inside the pump. There have been multiple members here in FTE report "premature" pump failure when running the BF1212 setup, and that potential is eliminated with the much more open screen in the PS120. I myself saw two Carter "lift" pumps die after only about 75k miles each while running the BF1212 (Carter pumps being between the BF1212 and the stock fuel pump), and that's why I switched to the PS120.

Confession time... The above explanation is valid and based on real science. I have not, though, run the actual numbers to see at which point the diesel fuel will create cavitation conditions inside the pump. It turns out that determining the True Vapor Pressure of diesel is very complex due to it's inherent composition variability. The vapor pressure also changes in relation to temperature. The cavitation point will be determined by many factors, some of which includes how full your tank is (another continuously changing variable when driving your truck), ambient temperature, fuel temperature, humidity, etc. That said, my above reasoning for switching to the PS120 is based on a combination of real hydraulic science and circumstantial evidence... not ideal, but reasonable.