Horrendeous fuel leak.

I have been away for the weekend and, just as I was reversing my caravan on to my drive, a sudden disaster! My wife shouted me to stop as diesel was gushing all over the place onto my nice, new, tarmac. What had happened was that the water detection switch on the bottom ofr the fuel filter has suddenly dropped a thread and was therefore not sealing any more. Having switched off the engine, I unplugged the lead, put a tray under and dropped the switch. For some reason it would not tighten up in the filter. It looked OK but I screwed in a Defender TD5 blank instead. As switches are not exactly cheap, I trotted off down to my local independent this afternoon and we tried the switch in a new filter and guess what - that's it - no problem. Checking out my vehicle revealed that the recently fitted blank was now coming loose and would not tighten up. Filter off and new filter on. The old filter was one that I had fitted last year as part of a service pack from a well known LRO advertiser. A check of the threads on the filter revealed that they "were not right". I'll point out that they had not been crossed. Don't ask me why the leak had not happened before but I will not bee buying cheap filters again.:doh:

Same thing happened to me last year. Borrowed my dads car whilst he was on holiday. Noticed a drip on the drive coming from the rear. Went to tighten up the plastic screw (no water sensor on this one) and it fell apart in my hands. Diesel would not stop leaking out until I had removed the filter. A cooper one and black screw sorted the problem and a quick filter of the (now gritty) fuel through kitchen towel worked a treat.

The vehicle was serviced four months earlier, however a white filter drain plug was used with a cooper filter. I shall be checking this more often!!

Regards,

Steve

It's a really common problem. Whenever you change yer fuel filter, chuck the old bung in your tool box, cubby box etc. You may just be glad you did. A roll of plumbers ptfe tape can also be dead handy.