Why should you change your fuel filter? - Petrol cars

[Rosstbeef]

Decided to slice open the old fuel filter that was still the original on my 2002 1.4 petrol with 80k miles. It had the manufacture date of 2001.
I can see this being a service item often overlooked by garages. It's supposed to be changed every 40k miles, but the service schedule doesn't say it should be changed after X number of years.

It looks pretty clean on the outside this is because when removing it from the car i used the leaked fuel to give it a wipe down.

This is what I found inside.....

Pretty black on the inlet side from the fuel tank. It had been certainly serving its purpose but definitely needed a change.

Comparison of clean and dirty side is night and day!

I got to this just in time. Have a look at the small bubble of corrosion in the next pic.

With a scrape of a screwdriver it turned out to be a hole. From the outside you could see that water had been trapped under the tape round the middle of the filter causing corrosion from the outside in. This car is missing the splash shield that covers the filter so this wouldn't have helped water getting to it.

So if you don't know when your filter was last changed it would be wise to have a butchers. They are important in stopping a lot of debris finding its way to the injectors.

Hope this has helped.

Ross

 

[Kleynie]

Where is the fuel filter located and where did you get the new one pls?

 

[Rosstbeef]

Yes that would help! If you look under the car just in front of the offside rear jacking point there should be a cover. Remove this and you'll see the filter. The cover is missing in the pic but you can see the mountings where it should be.

I got a Mann filter from GSF. The part number may be different for other cars, 1.6 and later 1.4 so enter your reg to check you get the right one.
The fuel lines unclip and pull off the filter. There is a screw to remove clamping the filter to its bracket. There will be a fair bit of fuel in the filter so a container to catch it in is a good idea and wear goggles in case the fuel splashes.

 

[Kleynie]

Thanks for that. I'll add this to the list of jobs.

 

[Exe_Chris]

The only issue with this is undoing the clips, which can be fiddly. It's an easy job for the petrols though. The filters are cheap too (sub £10).

 

[hotdog1]

Ive just had a look at this on my 1.4 petrol and realised the fun that someone has had in its past .................. The cover is missing for a start and i am wondering if anyone knows the part number to replace it? Secondly someone has tried to jack the car up using most of the plastic trim resulting in a nice half moon effect on the inside sill (grrrrrr) Upon inspection of the filter it would appear the cover IS there for a reason as the corrosion in that area was pretty severe!
Great job everyone on posting these threads !

 

[Quill]

Hi there Exe_Chris, Those fuel filter clips on my 1.6 petrol 2004 look easy to break. How do you undo them? I can see there's a small piece of plastic that I can get a small screwdriver under. It seems to be an integral part of the clip and it seems to be connected to it at one end. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be connected at both ends or whether I should lever it out of its recess. The hidden side seems to have some kind of feathery surface.
Regards Quill

 

[Naedugs]

If manufacturers put fuel filters in a more accessible place they might get changed more often! I've had an Audi 90 and 2 100s fuel filter under the bonnet easy!

 

[Vorsprung durch Technik]

If manufacturers put fuel filters in a more accessible place they might get changed more often! I've had an Audi 90 and 2 100s fuel filter under the bonnet easy!

My old 1991 B3 90 5cyl 20V had it's fuel filter in the same place as the A2, down to packaging i imagine as there's no space under either bonnet.

 

[Vorsprung durch Technik]

Decided to slice open the old fuel filter that was still the original on my 2002 1.4 petrol with 80k miles. It had the manufacture date of 2001.
I can see this being a service item often overlooked by garages. It's supposed to be changed every 40k miles, but the service schedule doesn't say it should be changed after X number of years.

It looks pretty clean on the outside this is because when removing it from the car i used the leaked fuel to give it a wipe down.

View attachment 38217

This is what I found inside.....

Pretty black on the inlet side from the fuel tank. It had been certainly serving its purpose but definitely needed a change.
View attachment 38216
Comparison of clean and dirty side is night and day!
View attachment 38218

I got to this just in time. Have a look at the small bubble of corrosion in the next pic.
View attachment 38219
With a scrape of a screwdriver it turned out to be a hole. From the outside you could see that water had been trapped under the tape round the middle of the filter causing corrosion from the outside in. This car is missing the splash shield that covers the filter so this wouldn't have helped water getting to it.
View attachment 38220
So if you don't know when your filter was last changed it would be wise to have a butchers. They are important in stopping a lot of debris finding its way to the injectors.

Hope this has helped.

Ross

Great post and just goes to show how important it is to change.

Soooooooo many cars i've read about that were not running right due to this very problem.

 

[Naedugs]

Some of the cars that I grew up with had magnetic sump plugs on the engine and gear box sometimes a sump plug would come out looking like a small fir tree!
I used to maintain Harriers for a living part of the servicing schedule was to take samples of hydraulic engine and gearbox oil it was passed through a filter screen and was sent along with the magnetic plugs designed to catch any debris to the laboratory for analysis,it was a very good system used to detect any failure before it became serious.