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snowpeke's avatar
snowpeke
Explorer
Oct 05, 2016

Cat fuel filter for Duramax

I have a 2002 Duramax and know that the injectors go bad around 150000 miles. I heard that the reason for the injectors going out is lack of filtertaion from the stock fuel filter. A guy told me that a special cat fuel filter would prolong the life of the injectors. Anybody had this done on your Duramax?
  • Baldwin BF 9882 is a direct replacement 2 micron filter. About as good as it gets. OE GM filter or others are 4-5 micron iirc.
    You can get an adapter to run more traditional Cat, Baldwin, etc filters but I believe you lose the Water in fuel sensing and water drain.
    Don't double up filters on a Dmax. No lift pump, the cp3 pulls fuel from the tank and won't like the extra resistance of redundant filtering.
    Need to add a lift pump if you're going to run multiple filters.
    And yes if you got that many miles on original lb7 injectors, you're better than average and filtration wasn't the inherent problem.
  • If I were THAT worried about filtering. I would probably find a Racor and put it inline with the factory one. Those of us with boats do this a lot. Have a Racor first in line that is 20-30 microns, then the one on the motor have it be a 2 micron to catch what the first one does not.
    Using ONLY a 2 micron would clog the system more than one would want generally speaking, UNLESS, you used a BIGGER than normal for the fuel GPH useage. IE a 60 GPH filter when you used at best 1-5 GPH vs the typical spec of a 15-20 GPH filter.

    Your mileage as all thing will vary on this topic too. I would agree with turtle tho, the first injectors on the Dmax's were not up to spec for what they should have been. Filtering is not the issue.

    marty
  • I've heard of a CAT fuel filter being used that has a 2 micron rating. Nothing really special about it as it's used in heavy equipment. Unfortunately I don't drive a duramax, going to a forum specific to the Duramax diesel would probably be the best place to get a more definitive answer.
  • snowpeke wrote:
    I have a 2002 Duramax and know that the injectors go bad around 150000 miles. I heard that the reason for the injectors going out is lack of filtertaion from the stock fuel filter. A guy told me that a special cat fuel filter would prolong the life of the injectors. Anybody had this done on your Duramax?


    Bosch screwed up on the design. It didn't really have anything to do with filtering. If it did GM would have never replaced the injectors with a newer updated design. The injectors will go out on your LB7. It's only a matter of time and it's a big job to replace them.
  • no,but the current GM fuel filter (which will be the one for your 2002) has much increased filtering performance, smaller particles and fiter efficiency.

    BTW my 2004.4 LLY using factory fuel filters has injector balance rates after 165K miles that are within 0.5 of the balance rates when it left the factory. balance rates are between 2 and 3 on every cylinder. IIRC around 7 is when you need to worry.