Racor issues......

[Duffman]

Anyone else run into a problem with removing the clear bowl from the filter?

Been using Racors forever and never had this issue until the past 2 seasons. Trying to remove the bowl and the threads in the filter spin. Tried lubing the threads on assembly and teflon tape. Neither worked. Had to cut open filter to grab a hold of the black plastic threads inside then remove the bowl.

Getting frustrating doing this year after year!

[Flygaff]

I also have had this issue and others. I received two Racors last week to replace my current ones. Yes it can be a bear to get the bowl off the bottom. My problem was, I had a small fuel leak on one of them. I removed the filter and noticed that top gasket swells up after contact with the fuel. it would not fit back in. changed to a new gasket and still had a leak. ??? removed the filter and found a small pinhole in the bottom side of the filter. The leak dumped about 2 gallons of fuel into my bilge. When I opened the package I was happy to see made in USA on it. Not so much anymore. Parker needs to improve their QA.

[Duffman]

Hydraulic fittings I use at work are Parkers. Never an issue until a few years ago when they started to be stamped "china" on them. Nothing but failures since.

No idea about the fuel filters but strange I'm running into the same issues starting at the same time frame.

[Maritime Matt]

I replace quite a few of these every season, s3213, s3214, s3220, s3227 TUL and SUL's are the most popular. When installing the clear bowl, the o-ring gets motor oil on it before installation. No need to crank down on these with brute force. I rarely have seen this problem.
The problem I am seeing and you do want to watch for is the Threads on the plastic cup being affected by Ethanol. You go to snug it up and you think its just about tight and then it pops off.