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Can we talk about how everyone treats the 5 micron fuel filter like it's the only one that matters?

I keep seeing guys in the shop and online act like the primary filter on a Duramax or Powerstroke is just a big pre-filter, but that's not right. The 30 micron primary filter catches the big stuff that would wreck your injection pump, and the 5 micron secondary gets the fine silt. I watched a tech in our shop skip a primary change on a 6.7 Cummins because 'the secondary was clean', and three months later we had to replace a $2,800 CP4 pump. The service interval is there for both filters for a reason. Has anyone else seen a pump failure that could have been avoided by just following the full filter schedule?
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3 Comments
jana_fox50
jana_fox5010d ago
Wait, you're saying the primary filter actually matters?
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williams.kim
That CP4 failure could have been a bad pump from the factory. I've seen clean filters on trucks with dead pumps and dirty ones on trucks that run fine. It's not always so simple.
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eric723
eric7237d agoMost Upvoted
The 2011 to 2016 trucks had the worst reputation for pump failures. I saw a guy with a 2014 whose pump grenaded at 80,000 miles with perfect maintenance records. Then my neighbor's 2012 is still on its original pump at 200,000 and he changes the fuel filter maybe once a year. It just seems like a lottery.
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