On 5 Jul 2004 at 8:47, Robert Lilley <RClilleyjr@COX.NET> wrote:

> The reason there is no fuel filter before the pump is because VW put a fine mesh
> filter in the fuel tank to keep particles out of the pump.  The after market
> fuel tanks DO NOT have one, so putting a pre-pump filter is advisable.
>
> Maybe VW found that when the small filter before the pump clogged, that
> damage the fuel pump would happen, so they designed a system to prevent that
> from happening.

I think you hit the nail on the head here. During one of my many crazed attempts to
solve my Vanagon Syndrome*, I pulled the tank from my '88 Westy, convinced I had a
fuel starvation issue. What I found amazed me for a vehicle with 380k kms: the tank
inside was pristine, without a spec of rust and very little dirt; and the mesh screen was
so large that I can't imagine fuel starvation being an issue without a lot of crud in there.
Good design? Seems pretty good to me.

*the VS was eventually traced to bad solder joints in the ECU, reheated a soldered, and
still good a year later :-)

--
Shawn Wright
http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright
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