Fuel Separator 101 : Anatomy of a MOPAR Fuel Separator p/n 68197867AA....

[gsbrockman]

Well......since I've been on the road verrrrrry little these past few weeks, all of the cars & trucks are spotless, and the yard is raked, cleaned, and twig & rock free. In my over abundance of spare time, I decided to share with you guys & gals the fuel separator from my 2013 RAM 3500 Crew Cab 4x4 DRW 385*850 pickup.

The mileage on the truck at removal was 40,279 miles and 803 engine hours. The service interval on this filter was 13,728 miles and 281 engine hours.

I began by cutting through the shell with a cutoff wheel. I was going to cut through the filter itself with the cutoff wheel as well, but ran into an issue with the wheel itself. The trusty hacksaw gets the credit for the rest of the demolition....

Let the discussion begin!!!

Filter cut through at base / mounting head.
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Base removed from filter.
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Shell, inside o-ring, and base.
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All of the guts....
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Filter media. Obviously this filter takes the brunt of the filtering. No wonder the underhood filter always looks good.
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More pics.....

Filter media is fairly nasty through & through.
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Note the inner most media material.
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Very fine screen in center of fuel filter.
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[gtwitch]

GS, Interesting photos! I have a frame mounted Napa filter on my 99 and I have not cut the filters as I just replace it at about 25,000 miles but I think I will cut the next one. If you are going to continue this practice, I would suggest getting a filter cutter from Aircraft Spruce, I have one that I use every time that I change the oil in the airplane and it surely saves an infinite amount of time!! I used to use ,grinder, hacksaw and other very messy methods and one of the local aircraft A&P,s loaned me his cutter and after that I bought my own. Another option is Ridgid sells a PVC pipe cutter and that works well also.

gtwitch in wyoming

 

[CKelley1]

summit also carries one
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[Essy]

Great pictures..... Thanks!

I'm changing mine this week! I changed the fuel filter on the engine last week. But I had to order the frame filter from Gino's.

 

[gsbrockman]

I have a fairly busy schedule coming up the next few days, so I gave the ol' Radio Flyer some much needed TLC / maintenance in the form of an LF16035 and 3 gallons of 5W40 Rotella-T Full Synthetic, an under hood fuel filter, rear frame mounted separator filter, and a tire rotation.

The under hood / canister filter still looked great. The rear frame mounted separator was fairly nasty, just like all previous ones I've examined. The Radio Flyer has 53,946 miles and 1,003 hours as of today. The service interval on the fuel filters was 13,256 miles and 248 hours.

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[TRAMPLINEMAN]

That's pretty much the same way I cut mine open. We had the same mileage at filter change, but mine didn't look anything like yours. The outside of mine looked more like the inside of yours.