time to change fuel filters alert. switch to e85 kicked up sediment

[thisisntjared]

i dont know how true this is but my buddy with a chevy z71 or whatever it is(big truck) went from 12 to 8mpg. he changed his fuel filter almost exactly one year ago and when he changed it last week there was tar in the filter. like sludge tar and he said it smelled horrible like burnt something. so he cleaned out his entire fuel system and got new plugs and hes back to 12mpg.

he talked to his friend who is a mechanic and his friend said recently he has had a lot of cars with the same problem and attributes it to the fuel switch as the refineries scrub down the tanks or whatever and kick up all the sediments and ship that out. the sediments are being stirred up in the refineries and in the gas station tanks themselves. again this is all hearsay, but it seems legit to me.

i have not changed my own fuel filter yet, but i wanted to know if anyone else has seen anything like this. i did experience quite a dip in fe recently, but then again i have been driving a lot less and going to the track a lot more.

[GasSavers_maxc]

Originally Posted by thisisntjared

i dont know how true this is but my buddy with a chevy z71 or whatever it is(big truck) went from 12 to 8mpg. he changed his fuel filter almost exactly one year ago and when he changed it last week there was tar in the filter. like sludge tar and he said it smelled horrible like burnt something. so he cleaned out his entire fuel system and got new plugs and hes back to 12mpg.

he talked to his friend who is a mechanic and his friend said recently he has had a lot of cars with the same problem and attributes it to the fuel switch as the refineries scrub down the tanks or whatever and kick up all the sediments and ship that out. the sediments are being stirred up in the refineries and in the gas station tanks themselves. again this is all hearsay, but it seems legit to me.

i have not changed my own fuel filter yet, but i wanted to know if anyone else has seen anything like this. i did experience quite a dip in fe recently, but then again i have been driving a lot less and going to the track a lot more.

I've been working on cars for 25 years. Its getting bad. I got bad gas last year. One of my coworkers got bad gas week ago.Hes cats are pluged. I worked on 3 other cars just this year so far with bad gas. Replaced 1 fuel tank it was so sludgy.

[LincolnW]

I just changed my fuel filter about 6 months ago. I really hope that we aren't getting bad gas. We pay these companies $3 or more a gallon, you would think it would be top quality pure gasoline.

The thing that sucks is, you can't really tell if your fuel filter is clogged unless you change it and cut the old one apart.

[thisisntjared]

or if you change it and sludge drips out the back of your old one.

so it is true, there is a lot of bad gas going around.... i think im going to watch my next 2 tanks and if they are under 38mpg then im going to run sea foam through the tank and change the filter after that.

[GasSavers_maxc]

Last year we had new Saab, with black molasses in the fuel. It was running on 3 cylinders. Sent it too the dealer.

[JanGeo]

It's the hoses being dissolved by the ethanol!

LOL

Add some Acetone and it will clean it up. - Hey anyone try to see if WILL dissolve with Acetone?

Thought we got some bad diesel on the power boat last week - turned out the engine computer was sensing neutral on the transmission because the 3 inch coolant hose from the Ocean intake had come loose and the bilge was flooding with sea water shorting out the switch. They only used a single clamp and they were all loose on these lines. What do you expect for a $40,000 engine install last year and they had just checked it a month ago.

[zpiloto]

Is there a disadvantage to switching to an inline filter instead of OEM? 10 bucks and you can see through it so you could tell if it was getting gumed up.

[Gary Palmer]

I have dealt with this "crud" before and it can be a real pain. One thing I did discover was that if you seriously want to keep this stuff out of your fuel system, you can put 2 inline fuel filters, in series, in. This causes the bulk of it to get caught in the first filter and the second filter still catches some additional junk. If you do this, you can still change one fuel filter at a time, because you just shift the filter that is second in line, to first in line and then put a new filter in. I had a Plymouth Reliant with a horrifically complicated carburator that had all sorts of orfice's to catch junk in and it was very expensive to get rebuilt. After I went to the dual fuel filters I didn't have any more problems.

[Gary Palmer]

I wonder if their might be something the gas refineneries do around July or August that propegates this problem. Both of the car's I know I've had these issues on, acquired the issues around July or August. Weird!

[n0rt0npr0]

Around May 15th a friends car got bad gas around here. Glad that were sharing accounts of this problem!

Originally Posted by Gary Palmer

I wonder if their might be something the gas refineneries do around July or August that propegates this problem. Both of the car's I know I've had these issues on, acquired the issues around July or August. Weird!