New owner here...

The other day my '83 300D Turbo was surging on the highway, so I figured it's time to change the fuel filters.

The job was pretty straightforward (once I figured out about the nut on top of the secondary filter!!!). I set the old filter outside on the driveway to drain it.

Today I had the Dremel tool out for something else and for giggles, I decided to cut open the fuel filter and see how it looked and why it clogged up (don't know the car's history or how it was cared for). The filter was dirty, and I figure it had been there for a while.

I was shocked it ran at all!!! The bottom of the filter had 1 or 2 cm of some nasty black sludge. Kind of like swamp mud!

Is this fungus? Based on what I've read in need some Star*tron to keep things clean.

yuck!

-Chris-