Buy Cheap Buy Twice...

[rcknecht]

I bought 3 Sierra Water Separating Fuel Filter, Long - 18-7945, and installed them on my boat... My engines would not run... These filters do not work on my 7.4 MPI (L29) Mercruiser Engines... I had to reinstall my old quicksilver filters... and yes, I did prime the filter with fuel prior to installing them... I wasted time and money... I will now stick with OEM or Quicksilver.

 

[jason78]

Agreed. I have heard of a number of people having problems with Sierra or other "secondary brand" filters, impellers, components, etc. Quicksilver/Merc parts have been known to have their own problems but at least based on my experience and those around me they generally work well. Especially with impellers, once you have to change it a month later, all of a sudden the $10 savings starts to loose it's appeal.

 

[BillK2632]

I've used a lot of Sierra parts and never had a problem, water pumps for my Alpha I, filters, ignition parts and this spring I replaced the bellows, shift cable and trim senders with Sierra, so far no issues (I did it myself, so my time if I had to redo due to parts). These days I buy my filters from NAPA and again never an issue.

That's really strange that you had trouble with a fuel filter, could you tell any difference looking at them? Really interesting that 3 different ones had a problem - very curious what the issue was. We know NAPA, Quicksilver and Sierra don't make filters - Wix make NAPA, not sure who makes the others. I would call Sierra, I hear they are pretty good about making things right when there is a problem.

 

[rondds]

If I am remembering correctly, Sierra part numbers are the same as NAPA. I've never used their fuel filters so I can't comment on them but I have used their spark plug wires, distributor caps and rotors (on my previous boat) and they worked flawlessly.

I have used Wix fuel/water separators many times on the previous boat (this boat doesn't have spin-ons) with no issues. Wix makes NAPA, and if NAPA is Sierra I can't see why they wouldn't work.

Weird...

 

[rondds]

OK. Just checked...not seeing a correspondence btwn NAPA and Sierra. Guess my memory doesn't work so good anymore!

 

[Mike Blake]

Years ago 3-4 I bought a case of Merc filters on ebay. cheap and they work.

 

[rcknecht]

The filters I bought were the long ones, and may have been 10 microns... Perhaps the shorter ones and or the 21 micron filter would work...