Fuel Filter

I read somewhere recently that the fuel filter is built into the gas tank (!?) and really can't be changed without removing the tank. This seems mind-boggling to me, but that's what I read. Poster opined that this was the case on many current cars.

Can't seem to find that post again, but here's a thread with pictures showing a destructive disassembly of a Prius gas tank.

http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-technical-discussion/30593-gas-bladder-exposed.html

One of the pictures is labeled

This picture makes me think it would be essentially impossible to replace the filter, that you'd have to replace the entire tank assembly.

 

The fuel filter indeed resides within the fuel tank and therefore is not separately replaceable.

 

As it is on many modern cars. Fuel contamination is not a common problem, at least in this country.

Tom

 

Fuel filter is near to the tank where you fuel it.... it is not kept separately it is near to tank... but in modern cars i do how are placed...

 

Yep. Forget about ever replacing it yourself.

 

Modern gasoline vehicles have gone to Returnless fuel injection, primarily to reduce evaporative emissions. Since there is no need for huge volumes of fuel to be pumped to the rail, to be sent through the regulator back to the tank, the car makers decided to make the fuel filter a "lifetime" component

That means when the filter eventually plugs, you have to either drop the tank, or hope for an access from the back seat.

Typically, vehicles made +2004 have returnless fuel injection and in-tank filters

 

Maybe not from the refinery but dirty pump nozzles at the gas station can drop contamination into your tank.

 

I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

 

Yes, and if you roll your car without the gas cap you may get foreign objects in the tank too.

Tom

 

You will also tend to scratch the paint. But don't worry, that will buff right out

 

I worked at a city public works mechanic shop and they had a number of cars from a certain area blow out fuel pumps. The fuel filters were all clogged. The cars used the same fueling station. It was determined it was the station they used.
There are videos on YouTube of people cutting open and inspecting fuel filters after many miles of use. They are filthy.

Cars are not built to last. Companies want you to buy new cars on a predictable regular basis. The market is driven by incentive to pay/attract investors as a top priority. For stocks to go up up up....profits/sales/margins have to go up up up faster than competition. Quality is now an equation, not a goal.

Fuel filters do clog. Gasoline, even at good stations, can have impurities from all sorts of points of entry....bad piping, bad seals, water entry/rust, contamination from trucks etc. Etc. Etc.

 

Not to hijack your thread but, anyone know where the fuel filter is on a 2004 as well?

 

Gen-2 fuel filters are under the back seat on top of the gas tank. If you’ve got experience working on cars it’s not so much technically difficult but it’s a lot, seriously, of steps to get through. There’s lots of disconnecting and reconnecting involved and loose parts that can get dropped and lost. You need a funky tool to take off the cap of the unit. With the help of a mechanic friend we were able to make our own. I don’t recommend doing this without previous experience. For the price of a good honest auto shop (+/- $150 by me) it’s not really a job for average shade-tree mechanics. I cursed out the Toyota engineers for being way too much like their German counterparts. It’s an over-engineered pita. There are 2 decent videos on YouTube you can watch and see how to do it.

This is the better of the videos (my opinion) ... I could be wrong.

 

If they actually replace a fuel filter in that video, it is either not a Prius or it is a non-North American model Prius.

If you want to change the fuel filter in a NA Prius you need to replace the entire fuel tank as the fuel filter is inside the fuel bladder within the tank.

Sad but true.

All this information is covered in the first few posts in this very thread.

 

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OH MY GOODNESS!!!

WHAT DID I REPLACE!!!

OH NOOOOOO!!!

 

The Gen 3 pump/filter assembly does look exactly like that, and the Gen 3 repair manual shows all of those steps for disassembly and replacement.

I had a US Gen 1, sharing the bladder tank with Gen 2, and my Gen 1 did not even have the access hole under the rear seat. There was no access other than dropping the tank.

I've never personally had the rear seat cushion out of a Gen 2. The US Gen 2 manual does show an access hole there, but the hole and the cover are not the shape shown in the video, and the tank shown in the manual isn't much like the one in the video.

The video has a brief wide shot toward the beginning showing the backs of the front seats, and there seems to be some kind of pictorial label along the bottom of the passenger seat. Maybe somebody recognizes that and could say what region that car was from?

I suppose Zeppo did change something. It would just be interesting to know where that car was from and how it ended up in Chicagoland with that style of tank.

 

The Gen 2 fuel filter is in the tank with the bladder. While the Gen 3 reverted to a standard design with a removable and removable filter pump and gauge sender assembly with separately replaceable parts, the entire tank with the bladder must be replaced.

As I recall, the Toyota supplied tank is now very expensive and quite complicated to replace.

 

Now in that video, the tank, and the access hole and cover, do look like what's in the US Gen 2 repair manual.

 

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Well ... It was not My car ... and it wasn’t in Chicagoland. I do drive a Gen-2. That’s why I was asked and interested in the work. I was actually the “side-kick” mechanic on the job. The regular guy, a friend of mine, was a mechanic for the State Police.