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Fuel Filters & Fires

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I don't know who frequents any of the public forums but an interesting situation was posted on a couple of forums. A couple on vacation were on vacation, towing tier 5th wheeler with their 2013 Super Duty. The description of the incident was:

 

 

I was on vacation and pulling my fifth wheel in Illinois last Monday when my truck caught on fire. The first indication was a notification on the instrument panel of "Low Fuel Pressure". A couple of seconds later, we saw smoke while pulling over. As we slowed down, thick black smoke came boiling out from the hood and also through the firewall. Several people tried to put out the fire with extinguishers with no luck. The fire appeared to be burning near the top of the engine, but I couldn't pinpoint it since we couldn't open the hood.

My wife, dog and I moved away from the flames while waiting on the fire department. Since we were in a remote area, it took about 20 minutes for them to get there. The fire consumed the truck and contents, and caught the fifth wheel on fire. By the time the fire department got there, the truck, trailer and most of our personal items were consumed.

Our insurance is investigating the cause of the fire and hopefully they can pinpoint it. I just found this forum today, and was curious if any of you have heard about similar fires.

One other bit of information was that we had a Ford dealership service our truck in Michigan a couple of weeks before the fire and they replaced the fuel filters.

 

I immediately thought "fuel filter line popped off and covered the hot turbocharger and pipes with fuel."  I had that happen to me once but without any fire. Ever since that happened I push and pull on the secondary filter lines to be sure they are in fact locked onto the fuel filter. This incident reminded me of mine and how it could have turned out for my customer.  Just another reminder to us all to be absolutely sure those lines are secure... assuming that this is indeed what had happened, I feel bad for the guy as his truck was consumed as well as much of his travel trailer.

 

FilterFire-1.jpg

 

FilterFire-2.jpg

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I hear stories of pinholes forming in the top of the upper filter causing fuel to spray out.  I have never actually seen this though.

 

I did have a line pop off on me once post roadtest after replacing a fuel system.  The truck did not smoke however, it just leaked a ton of fuel. 

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