Welcome Aboard, Tony!
Tho I live in Texas, I work in West Africa....Equatorial Guinea....so I feel free to call you "Neighbor"...!
So far as your fuel problems go....if you can't afford or locate a proper separator / filter unit, your best bet is to rig up an old oil drum as a settling tank...paint it black to get it good and warmish in the sun...fill it daily and let the water in your fuel settle out and filter what you draw out of the tank thru some sort of cloth filter to capture any algae that may have grown...old sweat socks are my favorite...draw the bottoms off the tank daily with your pump or siphon hose until the discharge runs clear..then fuel up your machines.
.I throw the slops in yet another bucket and let them settle further...
I've built a couple of pretty nice separators ones over the years...my fav was at a project in Liberia...snagged two nice bronze valves and a few copper "tees" salvaged from a wrecked building and soldered them into a clean drum....finished the rig with some clear plastic tubing for a sight glass and filler....set it below an overhead fuel tank and kept it topped up via gravity as a "day tank"...
Anyway....best of luck and how about some photos?
Terry
