Water in fuel or water separator in filter?

[ykobayashi]

Hi,

I had a hair raising fuel filter clog up in traffic in downtown LA today. No warning. It just came out left field and bam, the car starts losing power. I had been doing high speeds, hills etc. with no problems today before the clog up.

Luckily I had kept my two tank WVO system filled with a few gallons of diesel. I no longer grease. I flipped the switch and vroom my anemic engine came back to life. I had been flooring it to get to twenty mph when things started falling apart.

All I can think of is I had just filled a full tank at circle K this morning before setting off. Did they pump water into my tank?

In the past clogs usually give me some warning. Like no power at high speed or on hills. But this thing just hit me out of the blue. The car was doing great five minutes before it started stalling. It didn’t feel like an air bubble, just a smooth power loss.

So I started wondering, do the OM617 fuel filters have a water separator? I recall my old VW had a drain on the bottom and the MB filter does not. Am I supposed to dump out my filter periodically?

Man what a sinking feeling as my car lost power while I was boxed in at 5 mph in traffic. Thank goodness I was too lazy to remove my auxiliary fuel valve and filter after quitting WVO.

Tomorrow I’ll tear into it and check the contents of my filter. Wow I’m so happy I didn’t get stuck. Right on the heels of my stuck fuel sender resulting in a tow.