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The Importance of Fuel Filter Maintenance
Duramax Trucks require good clean fuel in order to run optimally. This means filter maintenance is a must! We recommend to replace the fuel filter in the engine bay every 15,000 miles. Over time the filter will catch contaminants in the filter media keeping the fuel system clean but it will eventually lose its efficiency, at the fuel test port you can measure the amount of vacuum that is in the fuel system, the factory spec is 3-5 inHg of vacuum. If filter maintenance is neglected you will see the amount of vacuum increase and in extreme cases it can cause drivability issues such as lack of power and even cause check engine lights. Below you can see this extreme case where the filter had not been changed in quite a long time and pulled 23.5 inHg of vacuum in the system and caused a low rail pressure code to be set.
The filter media will trap al of the contaminants that comes from today's fuel that can contain debris and water within the fuel. This will eventually cause it to clog as you can see below.
A new fuel filter will solve this problem with the clean filter media working as it was designed to do again. The fuel system on these trucks are under extreme pressures and require very clean fuel to be delivered to the injection pump and injectors that see pressures of up to approximately 30,000 psi. If any little contaminant makes its way into the system it can cause damage and premature wear to the fuel system causing you to need to replace it sooner than it should.