The Number 1 piece of advice to save your diesel engine

If there’s one piece of advice I can give vehicle owners, it’s to “change that fuel filter”. Most manufacturers advise owners to change the fuel filter only when a warning light comes on. During a recent trip to the Kimberley region, I came across a few travelers with similar stories: “I had some bad fuel somewhere along the Gibb River Rd. and my filter light came on. Upon changing the filter, it was full of gunk and it’s blocked”. After having further discussions with a couple of them, I found out that during the past 3 services (approx. over 30,000 km), there wasn’t a single fuel filter change to be seen on any of the invoices they had. Obviously, this means that the “dirty fuel” story now included tens of thousands of kms of city driving (and driving in general).

As you know, in these Outback areas, a lot of people rely on one supplier. That being said, if one supplier is selling dirty fuel, there will be a graveyard of stopped vehicles on either side of the road since people have been filling up from that one source. And I guess there will also be a mob waiting at the counter of that fuel stop looking to hang someone as well.

One of the stations along the Gibb River Road where we stopped at for fuel had mentioned that “dirty fuel” was always the scapegoat from massive repair costs. “If it’s dirty fuel then the insurance company covers it for the driver.” I guess given a $4000 recovery bill to tow you out of those areas, I can see why. BUT, this completely skews the dirty fuel statistics and it doesn’t help the fact that your whole trip has been wrecked because of “dirty fuel”!

Best way around this whole mess: change your fuel filter every 10,000km, or install a new one before a long holiday trip and install a new one when you get back. At just $50-100 for a filter, when you are filling up with $1000-1500 worth of fuel on a long Outback trip, it’s a very cheap insurance for me.

Safe Fourwheeling,

Andrew Leimroth

Berrima Diesel