How To: Replace Fuel Filter
by Eric Southers | May 30, 2004 12:00 pm
Figured this was an easy enough task, and again, like many of my repairs on this site, I’ve had never changed this out since I’d owned the car at the time. Plus it was only $20 from local auto parts store.
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1) First you need to relieve the pressure on the fuel lines. Do this by removing the EFI 15A fuse (circled below, but make sure this is the right fuse for you). This will disable the fuel pump.
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2) Crank the car, like you normally would when starting it. It should fail to start, as there isn’t any fuel pressure to feed the injectors. Try starting the car about 7 times.
3) Jack up the rear of the car and support it on jackstands.
4) Crawl under the car, under where the battery sits on the driver’s side. You should see the below pic when looking up at the firewall. Remove the circled banjo bolt with a 17mm socket. Have a rag or two covering the ratchet and bolt as you loosen it, you may want to have a pan below the filter too. Also, wear some goggles while doing this. Gas in the eyes burns nicely. Once you break the bolt loose, you will get some sprayage of gas. If it continues spraying fairly hard, tighten the bolt back up, and crank the car a few more times to relieve the pressure some more. When fuel stops coming out of the hose and filter, remove the banjo bolt completely.
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5) Now go back to above the car. Remove the battery, to allow you access to the top banjo bolt on the fuel filter. You may be able to get to it from the bottom, but I couldn’t get the right leverage on the bolt from under there. It’s a 17mm as well. There shouldn’t be much leakage of fuel here, maybe a couple drops is all to worry about.
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6) Now you just need to remove the two 10mm bolts that hold the filter to the firewall. You can then remove the filter, here it is:
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7) Remove the bracket from the old filter. There’s just a long 10mm bolt clamping it together.
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8) Place the bracket on the new filter, in the same orientation that it was on the old. Here’s a few pics to give you an idea of how it should be.
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Here you can see one of the 3 grooves in the bracket that line up with the ‘bumps’ in the filter. It’s fairly intuitive when putting it back on how it’s supposed to go.
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9) Now just install the new on in the reverse of how you removed it. Make sure to use the new copper crush washers of course. One little note when putting it back in. Don’t tighten the bracket completely in place on the firewall. Keep the bolts fairly loose, until you get both banjo bolts threaded. Tighten the bracket down, then torque the banjo bolts to 22ft-lbs.
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10) Reinstall battery & the 15A EFI fuse.
11) Next, turn the ignition to the ON position but do not crank the car. This turns the fuel pump on which builds the pressure back up in the fuel lines. After about 10-15 seconds, crank the car. It may take a couple cranks.
12) Let the car idle, and check for any leaks around the banjo bolts.
13) Shut off car, and remove car from jackstands.
Only hard part here is gettin a good angle on the banjo bolts. Plus mine were on there pretty dang good. Takes about an hour to complete.
Update, March 15, 2002
Here’s some pics of the old fuel filter taken apart with hacksaw and the help of a hammer and screwdriver:
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Source URL: https://midshiprunabout.org/mk1/fuel-filter-replacement/