Pat, here are a few more thoughts. There is a valve (ball) inside the filter that is supposed to keep fuel from draining back to the tank. If your filter allows this to happen, then it is probably time to rebuild the filter, something that is easy to do. Racor has both the exploded diagrams and the rebuild kit available. If your bowls are 1/2 filled with contamination, there is a good chance that you will need to disassemble the bowl from the filter since the solids may not allow the bowl to drain. This, too, is easy to do. Once the filter housing is removed from the mount- 4 screws will allow the bowl to come off of the housing. However, when reassembling, there is an O-ring that must not be deformed. If you have the ball-valve type drain, once opened a wire can usually be inserted to loosen the solids, but a screw type drain, if the solids won't drain, you will probably have to remove the bowl to clean it. The good news is that if you have to remove the bowl, or the drain cock breaks, then you might as well, while the filter is apart, get the re-build kit and replace all of the bits and pieces that come in the kit. This, too, is easy to do and requires no special tools other than screwdrivers and a Cresent wrench. One thing that I do when draining the fuel bowl is to capture the dirty fuel and keep pouring it back in, from the top of the filter, letting it run down to flush out the bowl, repeating until the bowl is clean.. This can be done with clean fuel, but why waste clean fuel on this dirty part of the job. Rudy and Jill Washington, DC Briney Bug- a 34 foot sail-assisted trawler 850-832-7748