mulwyk

Last fuel filter change...I don't remember...maybe five years ago? Anyway, I'm sure it's long overdue. I should note that when the fuse blew, we had been running in heavy rain for over an hour. The top of tank/fuel pump area may have been awash at the time. I found the fuel pump (It WAS easy to access once I got past the carpet and those cargo hooks). The top of the pump was like a little forest of rust flakes which I cleaned up with a tooth brush and a vacuum cleaner. The wires look good now and are standing proud, so I've decided to wait and see what happens before replacing the pump. (The wife was real sweet about my unilateral "wait and see" decision, She went out and bought me a spare fuel filter and a little packet of 10 amp fuses,)

Well, I replaced the fuel filter. (Thank you, Towncivilian) The old girl started right up, ran about 1500 rpm for a minute or so, then settled into a 800 rpm purr. She seems to be running perfect now. That's all that was wrong!? A clogged filter?? Next, I'll check the fuel pump connections and put some StabiI in the tank, but I feel like I should do something more. Replace the fuel pump? Clean out the tank?

Could be. As part of our winter prep, we drain the gas out of the tractor, mower, generator, etc. and put that old gas in the Pathfinder. So the gas was about 6 months old, and maybe had some old-tractor-gas-tank crud in it. Would a clogged fuel filter cause the fuel pump fuse to blow?

The car: '89 Pathfinder, 5 speed, 4X4, 160,000 miles, VG30i The situation: we leave our Pathfinder at the farm during the summers...it runs very few miles, just back and forth to the pasture. Then in the Fall we bring her back to town where she is our primary car over the winter. We been doing that for 20 years with no problems. But this year we got about 200 miles out when the old girl just stopped running! Took awhile to find the problem: a blown fuel pump fuse. We replaced the fuse and it started right up, ran about two minutes at high idle (1500rpm), then went into a very rough surging idle...2000rpm, 1000rpm, 2000, 1000.....etc. We checked the ECU codes...it's flashing "55, no problem" Any idea what might be wrong?