ABOUT FUEL FILTERS
Your fuel filter can and will affect the performance of your vehicle by allowing the fuel to pass through it easily or, if it is dirty, restricting the fuel flow. If the filter becomes clogged or restricted and it is not changed, you will notice a definite loss of performance, power, hard starting, rough idle, and other trouble symptoms which can cause several other problems with your vehicle.
Depending on where you live in the country, fueling stations change the types of fuel blends available during Summer and Winter. When the stations change the fuel blends for the different seasons, they generally run the storage tanks empty. This forces the service station pumps to pick up and deliver the dirty bottom sediment of these storage tanks directly into your vehicles fuel system. Your fuel filter has the job of keeping the dirt out of your injectors, and becomes clogged quickly because of this. We live in a part of the country where most fueling stations change blends twice a year.
ONCE A YEAR, GENERALLY AT THE BEGINNING OF SUMMER IS THE BEST TIME TO HAVE YOUR FUEL FILTER CHANGED.
A FEW FACTS ABOUT CLOGGED FUEL FILTERS
Leaving a restricted fuel filter in your vehicle can cause the fuel pump
module to burn out, creating an expensive repair.
A vehicle forced to run lean (plugged fuel filter) can melt holes in the pistons due to the lean air fuel mixture.
When the vehicle is running lean, the computer tries to compensate for the lean mixture by lengthening the fuel injector pulse width. If the maximum parameters are reached, the check engine light will come on and diagnostic trouble codes will be set. The difficulty of this is that the computer has no way to verify that the fuel filter is clean and clear and it will assume there are other problems. This could lead to other repair expenses that were not really necessary.