Rough Running, Crude in Racor

[johnbrowder]

When I started the bus after sitting about 3 weeks, it fired immediately, but died quickly after a few seconds. It took several seconds of cranking to restart, but then seemed to run fine. on a 300 mile round trip, I experienced a few episodes of:
1. Loss of power
2. Stumbling vibration
3. Boost drop off

Each time, I would back off power, and reapply, boost would come up and power seemed normal. No DDEC codes thrown.

I assumed it was the fuel filters. It has been right at 1 year and 7500 miles since they were changed.

So today I changed the primary (Racor) and secondary (spin-on) filters. The exterior of the razor was BLACK. There were also black particulates in the Racor bowl. I disassembled and cleaned out the bowl, and unscrewed the vortex from the filter housing.

Inside the bore of the vortex was abundant black material, looking like shredded rubber. I cleaned all that out with WD40, forceps, and compressed air. There was nothing slimy about the material, and there was no water visible in the bowl I reassembled everything and all appears well.

Road test in a week or so.

Photos attached.

This has raised several questions in my mind:
1. Is this normal from normal operations?
2. What is the black stuff, is it part of my fuel line?
3. Is filter media normally black on service (I have never seen this in marine applications)
4. Is it normal for the vortex to clog up?
5. Does anyone install the Racor Vac Gauge in place of the T-handle? I have always done this on boats to monitor excess suction indicating clogged filter or collapsed line.

Any thoughts?
Filter:
Filter.jpg

From Vortex:
From Vortex.jpg

From Bowl:
From Bowl.jpg