2.7L Fuel Filter Replacement DIY in 6 easy steps

So it was getting time for a new fuel filter on my 96 2.7L and I kept putting it off after hearing about what a horrendous pain in the ass the job was. I checked the DIY threads and couldnt find a 2.7L fuel filter one (saw the video but there wasnt an actual writeup) so I went ahead and made one. Although this is a pretty straightforward job, Im hoping there may be a scrap or two of knowledge that would help novice DIYers out.

Like any job, using the proper tools allows you to do the job the right way and to save time. I'm certain many of the fuel filter horror stories are a result of folks not having the proper tools for the job. Let me assure you that the fuel filter replacement on the 2.7L can be done pretty damn painlessly. If you use my exact tool list below, you can get through this job in a relative breeze.

So here is Moco's painless fuel filter in 6 easy steps writeup:

Tool List (Aside from those required to lift vehicle and remove wheel):

• Liquid Wrench penetrating fluid
• regular size phillips screwdriver
• 3/8 drive ratchet
• 17mm socket
• 12 mm socket
• 10 mm socket
• 10 inch ratchet extension
• 6 inch ratchet extension
• 3 inch ratchet extension
• 3/8 drive universal joint
• 2 (TWO) 17mm combination or ratcheting wrench
• 14 mm combination wrench
• 19 mm combination wrench
• decent size pry bar or equivalent (at least 24 inches)
• stool or sturdy box to stand on
• magnetic wand
• thin flat blade screwdriver or hook and pin set
• flat jaw pliers

STEP 1:
Safely lift and support truck and remove wheel.


STEP 1A:
Pull back the splash skirt in driver's side wheel well toward front of truck.

NOTE: Black arrow shows splash skirt folded over towards front of truck. Red arrows show mounting holes for splash skirt. In my case, the splash skirt pulls out easily by hand. You may need to pop out the plastic mounting screws with a flat blade screwdriver if they don’t pull out easily by hand

NOTE 2: At this point, it would be a good idea to spray some Liquid Wrench on the fuel filter bracket bolts and the fuel filter line banjo bolt on the top of the engine bay (photo in STEP 3) and the fuel line fitting behind the fuse box (photo in STEP 2)

Once you have the splash skirt out of the way, you can poke your head into the wheel well access area and see this:

Here the red arrows point to the front fuel line fitting which is a 17mm banjo bolt and the front of the fuel filter body

STEP 2:
Move up to the engine bay and locate your fuel line directly behind the fuse box. The fuel line fitting consists of a 19mm and a 14mm portion.

It would behoove you to spray the fitting with Liquid Wrench and give it a few minutes to soak in (for best results do this the night before or prior to jacking the truck up and removing the wheel). Use your 19mm and 14mm combination wrenches to break loose the fuel line fitting and separate the fuel filter line from the vehicle fuel line. You will only lose a little trickle of fuel, nothing to worry about.

STEP 3:
Move up to the rear of the engine and locate your upper fuel filter line (once again a 17mm banjo bolt). Its very hard to see at first and it took me a good 15 minutes of hunting before I was able to finally find this guy poking through. It helps to remove your intake plastics (use your phillips screw driver to loosen the retaining rings and pull the plastic tubing off and disconnect the vacuum hoses – a little liquid wrench on these things makes a big difference as well). Place your stool by the driver’s side wheel well and poke your head over to the top of the motor, oriented toward the rear driver’s side of the intake manifold.

This photo shows where the banjo bolt is oriented:


Here is what you will see when you stand on your stool and look down at the banjo fitting:


As you can see, it’s a bit easier to get to fuel line bolt when the intake plastics are out of the way:


Use your ratchet, a 17mm socket, and an extension to break the banjo bolt loose and remove the bolt.
NOTE: There will be a washer on the bottom of this bolt – make sure not to lose it. Once you remove the bolt, you can use a small flat head screwdriver or a pick/hook to remove the washer:

Now your fuel filter is disconnected from the fuel lines at both the bottom and top end.

STEP 4:
Move back down to the wheel well. If you crane your head properly, you will see the top and bottom mounting bolts for the fuel filter bracket into the engine block. This is where all the gnashing of teeth about this job happens. However, I found this to be actually pretty easy with the proper tools. The bottom bolt is cake – use your ratchet, a 6 inch extension, and a 12mm sockets and break loose and remove the bottom bolt:


STEP 4A:
The top bolt is a little tougher, but with the proper tools it comes out no problem. The follow set-up worked awesome for me: Place a 3 inch extension on the 12mm socket, fit a universal joint behind the 3inch extension, hook up a 6 inch extension to the universal joint, then use a 10 inch extension hooked up to the 6 inch and then place your ratchet on the 10 inch extension. Your contraption will look like this:

This will give you the angle you need to break the top bolt loose and remove it. Use one hand to put pressure on the extensions to make sure the socket is mating properly with the bolt and use the other hand to work the ratchet. All you need to do is break the bolt loose some and then you can use the small extensions and your hand to remove it the rest of the way.

STEP 4B:
Once your fuel line fittings are free and your bracket bolts are out, you can use a long pry bar to gently push the fuel filter assembly away from the engine block and remove the fuel filter. You may not need to do this but mine was stuck on there pretty well and I needed an excuse to break out my new set of Craftsman pry bars. Fit the pry bar in from the front of the engine bay and just apply gentle pressure until the filter assembly gives.

STEP 4C:
Now your fuel filter assembly is complete loose. The only obstacle here is routing the top fuel line through the intake manifold and top of the engine and out the front. It takes some wiggling and jostling but the whole thing should come out pretty easy once you work the angles.

Here is what the assembly looks like off the engine:

NOTE: Red arrow shows front bolt of fuel filter (bottom fuel line), Green arrow shows rear bolt of fuel filter (top fuel line), Blue arrow shows filter bracket, and Orange arrows show fuel line fittings

STEP 5:
Now you need to break loose the 17mm fitting on each end of the fuel filter so you can transfer them to the new fuel filter. The way I did this was using two 17mm combination wrenches to apply opposite pressure (one wrench holding one end and the other loosening the opposite). When you get one free, you can tuck the fuel filter next to something relatively soft – like your tire and wedge your hand or knee on the filter to hold it in place in order to remove the other 17mm fitting.

NOTE: Pay attention to the orientation of the fuel line at each end of the filter in order to put them on the new filter the same way so that when you go to reconnect the fuel lines, you don’t have weird angles and contortions to get them in place

NOTE 2:Each of the 17mm banjo bolts on the fuel filter has a top and bottom washer. Make sure to not lose these and to place them on the new filter the same way.

STEP 5A:
Lastly, you need to transfer your bracket to the new filter if it did not come with one. There is a 10mm bolt going vertically to the filter through both ends of the bracket. Hit this bolt with Liquid Wrench and wedged the filter under your knee or against a tire to remove the bolt and bracket and place it on the new filter. The new filter has groves that line up the bracket – just slide it over the groves.



NOTE: In my case, I monkeyed the bracket bolt and since it was old and rusted, it snapped in half and caused me to have to drill out the remnants of the bolt. Luckily, it turns out that the two bracket bolts securing the filter to the block provide enough tension to secure the filter and I didn’t need to replace the bolt.

STEP 6:
REINSTALL – do everything in reverse order and you will have this project wrapped up.
NOTE: I put the filter in place and connected the top and bottom fuel lines before putting the 12mm filter bracket bolts in as the top and bottom lines helped secure the filter and hold it in place to make replacing the bracket bolts a bit easier.

Thats it. Good luck!

The .pdf version is attached for anyone that may want the 'to go' option.

 

Nice writeup, this is my next task in early spring.

 

Nice write up. I tried to do it by just removing the filter. Didn't work as I couldn't achieve step 5 in that small space. Might try again. Never thought to remove the lines and pull everything out.

 

Exactly how I did mine the other day. Wish I had waited and read this first instead of figuring it out myself. Probably could have saved an hour of cussing, throwing tools, and wouldn't have lost so much blood. Next time I'm just going to build a new setup and relocate the bastard altogether, but this write up will definitely help folks out.

 

interesting idea to remove part of the lines. i suppose it makes it easier and wouldn't have thought to do it that way

 

Thanks guys, glad that you all found it useful.

 

I have been purposely avoiding doing this due to all the prior comments about how difficult this is to DIY. I am now reconsidering. Excellent write up with pics. Two thumbs up. Just out of curiosity how long did the entire project take?

 

I cant lie, the whole thing took me about 2 hrs and 15 minutes. But a good hour of that (or more) was spent drilling the broken bolt body out of the filter bracket and futzing around with drills and drill bits.

Doing it for the second time, I bet I could get the filter assembly out in 15 minutes after the wheel was pulled, probably could do the whole job in 45 minutes if I really hurried. Book time on the 2.7L filter is 1.3 hours, so if you do this at a dealership, you are paying no less than $130-$150 for labor alone. With the filter costing $30-$40, you are close to $200.

For your first time, if you budget yourself 2 hours, you should be good.

 

Anyone know if this process would work, as written, on a 1999 2.7? I am assuming it does.

 

I believe all 1st gen (up to 2004) 2.7L's are the same fuel filter wise.

 

I replaced the fuel filter on my 98 2.7 last summer. I removed the wheel and inner fender liner then disconnected the banjo bolts and removed the filter and bracket as one piece. I separated the filter and bracket once I had it out, installed the bracket on the new filter and then installed in reverse order.

Disconnecting the hoses like the OP did probably would've made the job a bit easier. Good thinking

It wasn't too tough and took me just over an hour from jacking it up until I started it up again. Don't be intimidated if you're contemplating this! You can do it and your truck will thank you. At 125k my truck still had the original fuel filter in it.

 

Well just changed out my filter last night and I only needed the 17 mm socket, 12 mm socket w/ extension and ratchet. Because of my lift and not having the fender skirts all I had to do was reach in and loosen the bolts and remove by hand. Probably only took me 20 minutes. Even with 33's I still could reach with ease and remove/install filter while working around the tire.

 

Many thanks Moco for providing the instructions and added motivation for this project. I completed the job today. I opted to take the fuel lines off from the filter as indicated above be Se7enine instead of the suggested points. I was worried about trying to get the line on the back of the filter threaded back up to the top of the engine again at the correct angle. Took me about 2.5 hours from the time I started dragging tools out until I had most of the stuff picked up and put away. I would definitely recommend spraying the bolts with some type of penetrating oil the night before. I used a Q-tip since most of the bolts were not easily accessible. Thanks again Moco for all your hard work.

 

Good job.

Glad you found my photos useful.

 

Just did this yesterday. Probably took about 2-3 hours. Most of that time was spent playing tetris in the garage trying to get the jack out, then jacking up the truck.

Hiccups I encountered.
1. The 19/14mm fitting was a bitch. I sprayed with PB blaster and let sit, didn't help much. The 14mm end started stripping from the get go. I was going to stop after it started getting so bad, but already had a couple turns, so figured I would continue. Busted out the crescent to get a good grip, and after that it stopped stripping. It was slow though.

2. The fitting in the back was easy. I was super careful taking it off not wanting to drop the washer. Well I got it off, and held it tight, and had the washer, then I hear it, "Clink, clink, clink." Eff, there's two washers. Luckily I found it on the ground.

3. From there is was pretty simple, just switch over and reinstall. I left the mounting bracket lose until I had the two ends hooked up, then mooked it up so I could get correct placement and angle of the mounting bracket, then tightened it up.

Thanks for the write up. Last time I attempted this, I took more time trying to undo the filter with the lines still connected. Couldn't get enough torque on them to break free. Much easier this way.

 

Im going to do this next

 

thanks for the write up, its going to be very useful to all of us to figure out how to do this job.

just wondering if anyone has relocated the filter to a more "easy to get to" location because where it is is a real PITA and even though you might only change it once every 5-10 years it doesn't make sense to me to go through all this work and then put the damn thing back in such a hard to reach place.

why not just cut the lines off after the fittings and run a fuel line to a generic fuel filter you mount under the hood somewhere?

 

Would this procedure be identical for the 2.4 motor, does anyone know? (i.e., are the 2.4 motors effectively the same as the 2.7 with the difference being bore and stroke?)

Ed

 

yes, I have the 2.4 and I can tell you everything looks exactly the same in the same locations.

if you look under the hood and peek under the front of the intake manifold you can just barely see the rim of the fuel filter under there but you cant actually see much more then that.

before someone showed me this thread I was asking if I had to pull the intake manifold off to change it lol.

 

Awesome write up!