That old timer who told me to never trust a used fuel filter was right.

Buddy of mine named Frank from a shop in Lubbock said always replace fuel filters on a truck you just bought, no matter what the seller says. I bought a 2005 Freightliner with a Cat C15 last month and skipped it to save $40. Broke down outside Amarillo with a clogged filter at 10pm on a Tuesday. Cost me $150 for a tow and a mobile mechanic. Anyone else learn a hard lesson from ignoring a cheap fix?

2 comments

2 Comments

michael_coleman101mo ago

lunaf67 I saw this article from a diesel shop in Oklahoma that said fuel filters are the number one thing people ignore on used trucks and it bites them almost every time. They tested like 50 trucks that came in for breakdowns and over half of them had filters that looked like they'd been on there since the Clinton administration. The thing is these common rail systems and even mechanical injected engines like your C15 can run fine for a while on a dirty filter but then you hit that one time where you need full fuel flow going up a grade or at high RPM and it just starves. You don't feel it coming until you're already stuck on the shoulder. That $40 was the cheapest insurance you could have bought and now you know better.

lunaf671mo ago

I mean... is it really that serious though? Sounds like you just had bad luck honestly, most of those trucks will run for thousands of miles on a dirty filter without issue.

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