Neil from Messick's here to show you a $12 accessory that you might want to consider adding onto your tractor or piece of equipment. Going around on Facebook lately started by a gentleman named John Ritter. He's got a good YouTube channel as well. You see a lot of people out there picking up these things, this big screen, what looks kind of like a filter is actually a coffee filter to use inside of a mason jar for making cold brew. John realized that this was a perfect fit inside the gas tank of a lot of machines. It makes a really good filter to sit there and filter what's coming out of your diesel can. Couple of gotchas that I found with these, we're going to walk around here today and show you a couple of machines where this is going to work, couple that you definitely want to be careful. See if this is something maybe you want to pick up for your machine.
So I'm clear, this is not something that I can sell to you. Everybody that's out picking these things up is buying them off of Amazon. I believe I paid 12 bucks for this. It was available for Prime shipping. They've got a bunch of different options that are out there though. This one you're going to notice is tapered down here at the bottom. This is not the first one of these that I bought. There's also another one of these out here, that's cylindrical that comes straight down without this taper. You do not want to buy that one. I bought that one first, walked up to a machine, stuck it down in to see if it was going to fit and could not get it back out again. On the inside of the fuel tank, there was a little lip around the bottom and that cylindrical one came down, caught the lip. In order to get it back out again, I had to break it into pieces with a screwdriver, which kind of defeats the purpose. This one though, with a taper on avoids any of those seams or anything that might be at the bottom of the neck in your fuel tank. You want to make sure if you're going to pick one of these up, you pick it up with the taper.
Now, while this is a filter for coffee grounds, don't think of this as a fuel filter. It's not filtering to that level, not like the fuel filters on your machine are going to do. It's not a substitute for that. Where this does have value is preventing debris and stuff from ending up in your fuel tank. Taking care of debris in fuel tanks is an extremely common thing that our shop is going to get involved with. When people are filling their machines, oftentimes a cap from something or a little bit of dirt, maybe some mulch got into your tank, or is on the end of your tank somewhere. When that debris ends up in the bottom of your fuel tank, it never goes away, it can't make it through the fuel lines. It'll bounce around in the bottom of the tank. Once enough of it accumulates, it can plug up the fuel that's going through the fuel wines and cause intermittent power problems with your machine or starting issues. But something like this in the neck of your fuel tank can catch that kind of stuff before it makes it down into the tank itself.
It may also alert you to a sludge or algae problem. If you use bulk fuel tanks, or if you don't rapidly turn the fuel that's in your diesel cans, you can have algae or sludge develop in the bottom of those cans and eventually make it into your fuel tank, plugging up your filters and causing those same starting and power problems. This is simply a preventative measure for causing fuel related issues on your machine. But don't think of it as a fuel filter. It's not filtering things quite to the point that your engine needs to see that clean fuel protecting those high performance, high tolerance, fuel injectors that are on that engine. That's what you're getting out of this, not necessarily fuel filtering.
What fuel tank does this fit in? So if you go around and you look at the fuel lids on a lot of lawn and garden equipment, not just Kubota, but you're going to see these same fuel lids on equipment that we have out here from Ferris and Exmark. I noticed it on a whole bunch of different models out here. These larger, about three inch fuel caps or so, are a perfect fit for this thing to fit up inside of. They're simply going to drop down into the fuel tank and then the lip here at the top of the filter is enough to catch it and keep it from falling down inside of the tank. Then you can actually screw your fuel cap right back over top of it, leaving it down there inside of the tank. Now that does not mean it's going to fit on every machine. When you go out and unscrew your cap, before you pick one of these things up and take a look at the inside, it needs to be this style right here without a large pressure relief system right in the middle of it. Some of these caps on some of the equipment out here, I was not able to fit this thing into, because of the construction of the underside of the cap.
On your left here as an example of a fuel cap, that this will not work with. You notice how large on the bottom this valve is, the thing that keeps the diesel vapor from making its way out the top of the cap. You're not going to be able to screw this lid back onto your fuel tank and keep that little screen underneath of here. It doesn't fit. This is the one though that's used on the current BX series. You'll notice how this is constructed a little bit differently. There's ample room underneath of this in order for that to work out. Now, these are cut and threaded exactly the same way so you can actually take this BX fuel cap here and use it on the ZD that I pulled off of this. For some reason, these machines have different part numbers for their fuel cap. The current part number in are bins over here right now, even for the ZD fuel cap, is constructed a little bit different than this one and would work with the screen.
Really the only way to know whether this is going to work out for you is to walk outside, unscrew your fuel cap check and see what it looks like on the bottom side. If you're really interested in this concept and you want to make it work, if you've got a fuel cap that looks like this, ordering this part number right here, which will leave down in the description below is going to allow you to be able to fit that screen underneath this cap with this type of valve system underneath of it. We're just going to keep going here. To try to give you the examples of many of these as we can so you don't waste the money on this if you don't have to. This is the fuel cap off of RTV, and you can see here, the mechanism is a little higher up in the cap. This fits underneath of here just perfectly fine.
This is my old used Hustler mower. This one would work just fine. Again, you see the assembly right here, leaves plenty of room for that guy to slide up inside. Ferris walk behind mower. That cap works out just fine. All of our new Ferris mowers out here use this same large, three inch fuel cap, but these do not fit. Now, that's probably really easy to notice. When you look inside the tank, the fuel neck itself is smaller than what most of these other machines are. That's a little bit on the John Ritter fuel filter special. Fits most of the equipment out here, probably about 80% of what I found. Maybe we gave you enough information here to know if you're in the 20% that wants to stay away from doing this, because it doesn't fit properly. I think it's a really cool idea. It's going to go in the fuel neck of my equipment, I can tell you that for sure. I like having it there. This thing filters as fast as what I can dump the diesel into the filter, which I really like. It flows and filters a lot better than the small filter that's going to be in a funnel or something like that. There's a lot to like here. We do not sell these. You can pick them up on Amazon or somewhere like that if you go look around a little bit. They seem to be on a lot of those generic shopping websites. This brings value to your equipment and that's what we're all about, so I thought it was worth talking about.
Fuel Cap That Fits The Filter - https://www.messicks.com/part/k7711-34122/cap-fuel
Coffee Filter County Line (tapered version) - https://amzn.to/3vAVVXP
Purchasing from this link supports Jon and his channel at no extra cost to you.
A Ritter Bit Will Do
KUBOTA BX MUST HAVE (Stainless Steel Fuel Filter) - https://youtu.be/GAhU5piaDjM
PROBLEM SOLVED! (Kubota BX Fuel Coffee Filter) - https://youtu.be/9FMydVMuW5E
