Griffin vs. Racor

i have seen them on ebay and I am also interested in them because they seem to be extremely similar and take the same element only the purchase price is cheaper.

I do not know anyone who uses Griffins.

Just go with a Racor, it's a proven design that you never have issues with. I've found that you always get what you pay for. You buy a cheaper product and you have nothing but problems......

Have you ever done a refit?

Racor vs Griffin filters

Griffin filters are Chinese made replicas of Racor filters. As to manufacturing
merits of the Griffins, I do not have first hand knowledge.

Hi,

I do not have any experience with them nor do I know anyone that has.

I have looked all over the net and do not find any negative comments on blogs/forums in reply to my searches.

I use a dual Racor 500FG on my gensets and change one filter every 10 days so I might try a box of these fellas and see if they last as long, keep the secondaries clean as long.

Yes, and when it comes to parts, you generally always get what you pay for. Same for fixing/repairing/rebuilding many junk parts during a refit. Many times the repair costs exceed the new cost of a part *not always*.

As for Chinese copies of a Racor, NO THANKS. Racor's are cheap enough that there is no need to buy chinese copies.

Odd question Bill, where are you going with this inquiry?

It was a sarcastic reference to the fact that only infrequently in yachting does one get what one pays for, or thinks one is paying for.

As far as a new entry to the market, sometimes a new guy can produce an equal or better product for the same or even lower price than the old tried and true item that may or may not match the quality standard it has come to represent.

Chinese knockoff? Guess where Racor filters and housings are manufactured.

If we refused to try the offerings of different manufacturers we would still be using tube type radars manufactured by American defense contractors on a production line built in 1943.

UMMMMM were'nt Dahl's and Separ's designed to be an improvement over Racors when they first were introduced? Dahl's were actually designed by the guy who origionally designed the Racor's. A direct copy of a Racor is nothing different, revelutionary, or changing anything.

It's like these blasted Algae-X's that Sunseeker thought was a **** good idea instead of installing Racor's or any other primary and relies on just the Man Common Rail primary's and secondaries, yet every MAN dealer and even MAN of North America's head engineer told me, they really SHOULD have racor's in front of them. Yet there is NO space in the engine room to mount Racor's. The Algae-X's macerate the algae so that the primary 10 micron filters stay crystal clean and the secondary filters (2 micron)which are twice as expensive and twice as hard to change, get plastered with Algae.......

My neighbours 65 azimut with Mans has racors in front off to one side, no problem

Personally I would love to see some company give Parker Hannifin (Racor) a run for their money competition wise with a good centrifugal / coalessor type of fuel filtration system as its a huge $$$ market / Kind of surprised that Alfa Laval hasnt jumped into the Static filtration market because they have the lock on centrifugal filtration from everything from Fuel, Ballast water, Milk and dairy etc, etc, I find that while Racor's do a good job their price point might be better if they had some serious competition.

Hi,

These guys also make very good gear and have been involved in dairy etc for years.

Centrifugal Separators from GEA Westfalia Separator

Good point K1W1,
I've had a couple of Westfalia units onboard over the years but found them to be odd machines compared to the Laval units as far as cleaning and P.M. was concerned, I guess that I was weened on lavals and couldnt come to grips/love with the new animal. Funny that this technology apparently derived from the dairy sector as you and I both mentioned. It seems that now the big market $$$ is going to be ballast water purification as outlined by the IMO guidlines. Ohh, to just have a crystal ball that worked better!!
Who would have thought ballast water would've been an issue 20 years ago? or for that matter the new push for vessels in port to "Cold Iron" and shut down their Gens. for cleaner air around urban centers?? Times are a changing for sure.

I disagree. The fuel filter housings/assemblies last darn near the life of the boat and most of the time you don't even have to fix anything on them. They're not un-reasonable IMO........

The turbine filter elements on the other hand are by FAR the cheapest compared to the competitions filter housings such as Separ, Dahl, and most other's.

i have a westfalia centrafuge that has been on the boat since 1972 i finaly rebuilt it last year, i usualy change the fuel filters once a year just because it needs to be claened about every ten days are so and change the oil at the same time

just some thoughts travler

Hi,

If your centrifuge really needs to be cleaned you need to check what you are loading as Fuel and also check what Gravity Disc you have in it.

I am running an Alfa Laval MAB 104 now 24/7 and we clean it once a month or more if the output hasn't dropped from 2.2 Bar ( 32 psi) to 1.0 bar ( 15 psi, the clean point).

Are you sure you do not have some serious growth in your fuel?

the fuel we get is not allways a good quality i do it mosty as a precaution if i know we are getting good fuel i will wait longer , thanks for the coments

travler

Purifiers

I started with Laval purifiers but then Westfallia came along with much better units (40 years ago) for the very bad heavy fuel oils we were expected to use in our big old slow speed diesels found on the ships.

Over time though we found that the Westfalia units were the best for the heavy fuel and Laval units best for lube oil.

As for cleaning some of the fuel we had onboard seemed to come out of the ground and straight into our tanks. Try a maximum of 4 hours before having to change over to the back up unit and then it would take for hours to strip and clean those big old units, using liquid nitrogen to freeze the lock ring and then chiseling out the carbon before the other one shut down.

The good old days and that was all done in 110 to 140 degree rooms dedicated to treating the fuel.

As for ballast water my other company has been involved with that for years, using filters, centrifuges, electro coagulators, zebro mussels brought everything to the fore and it has taken years for any real laws to be brought in so we switched to treating sewage water on the cruise ships, waste water from cattle grow pens and treating water inlets into Mexican bakeries.

Our ballast treatment has a great side effect in that the water going through plate coolers can be treated and the cleaning cycles of those units can be extended two or even three times longer.

Some of the ships now have absolute zero discharge of anything, compare that to all of the little yachts going around with bilge pump direct overboards, add all of that up from drips and leaks of oil and diesel and AC condensation and you may find your little 30 foot sail boat discharges more than the largest Carnival ship.

We even collected the rainwater off the deck on tankers.