Hello!

I was wondering if anyone has had any experience retrofitting a larger fuel filter in place of the original small primary fuel filter?

This last winter I was running into some cold start issues in my 81 300TD, around -5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Where I live, few diesel stations have "winterized" fuel. Instead they are recommending to sell fuel that doesn't cloud until ~6° below the average temperature.

I check and did the following things last fall in preparation for the winter:

Check compression
Changed oil to 5w40
Replaced glow plugs and confirmed it's circuit and Operation
Adjusted the valves
Fresh Battery
Treated fuel with Power Service White
Changed fuel filters
Replaced Injectors
Bleed the fuel

Even with all of this taken care of I was still having issues on those super cold mornings, it seemed like it would start and run for a few seconds, die and would not start until the temperature rised a day later.

I noticed that the primary filter looked very cloudy. Call me crazy, but I'm thinking that maybe once the fuel hit cloud point or even gelled slightly it clogged the small surface area of the filter and ran it out of fuel.

Now I'm thinking of retro fitting a larger spin on style fuel filter, such as a CAT filter. Maybe this would allow it to cloud a little bit but not clog the filter.

Has anyone done something like this with the primary?

Another concern of mine is that since the system only operated off of a lift pump, that the filter would be too large?

If anyone has any pointers that would be fantastic.