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Good point Finnegan. I never thought about the above deck/below deck difference before.
Just changed the Racor on my 18 outrage today. It has been getting put off as it was very tight and I feared damaging something in the process of removal.

What I did was disconnect the fuel lines, unscrew the mount from the boat, take the whole assembly to the garage and put it in a vice. Then I could employ the strap removal tool exactly where I wanted and easily break free the top and bottom from the filter. First time I have done it this way and was very pleased with the result.