Engine Does Not Accelerate Smoothly And Is Also Hesitant

[Cono18]

This problem only happened yesterday. Car is Toyota Corolla Verso SR 2.2 D4D, 2008. On my way home from my daughters it suddenly become hesitant, not smooth, like it was being starved of fuel is the best way that I can describe it. At first I thought I was imagining it, but unfortunately No. Car has just completed 41,400 miles. I have had it serviced from new by my local Toyota main dealer so It has full Toyota service history at all the correct service stages. Looking on the forum I came to the conclusion that it could possibly be the fuel filter. With this in mind I got out my owners manual to check when it should be changed. It states 6 years or 40,000 miles. I then checked my service documentation and this shows that it has not been changed. It was serviced at 35,302 miles last year, its 6 anniversary. I contacted the dealer, I was told that it had been changed on the previous service. My service documentation shows clearly that it had not been changed, this was its 5th anniversary 31,030 miles. Will take in tomorrow morning and see what they say.

Regards

Cono

Update

Visited Toyota this morning. Apparently they changed the oil filter in 2012 (again this was not shown on my service documentation as being changed), they showed me a printout from their database confirming this, the omission on my documentation was put down to an oversight by the technician. This was changed early following new guidelines put out by Toyota. It is a pity that Toyota don't let customers know! As a gesture of goodwill Toyota dealer replaced filter FOC.

I believe it will be helpful to other forum members to know that this problem was caused by poor quality diesel blocking the fuel filter, although it had only been on for just under 3 years and done approx 16k miles, it had done its job by preventing muck getting in from the diesel fuel we have here. It is caused by the additives placed in UK diesel. New standards have apparently been put in place so hopefully they should improve matters. I for one will be changing my fuel filter every 3 years. For further in depth info look at Hyundai Technical and Quality information with regard to this matter which goes into greater depth. Hope this helps.

Cono

[Cyker]

Glad you sorted it, and thanks for letting us know how you got on :)

I find the main dealers are okay at normal service things (Oil change, oil filter, air filters, sparks), and also other regular maintenance things that aren't covered by fixed priced services that they like to try and add on (Brake fluid, gear oil, ARB bushings etc.) but stuff outside that can vary quite wildly depending on the dealership.

For instance, according to my local dealer, a fuel filter change isn't listed at all as a standard service for my diesel Yaris, even tho' the handbook says something like every 60k miles. They even told me it was a very expensive job as the filter was in the fuel tank!

In reality, the fuel filter for my car is a fairly cheap part and dead easy to change (If quite messy...) as it's quite accessible under the bonnet and definitely not in the fuel tank!

I will say that the fuel filters shouldn't clog that often unless you have particularly bad fuel where you are. The only exception is for places with higher bio-diesel blends - It turns out Bio-diesel is an extremely good cleaning agent for the fuel system, so good that it will strip out years of gunk and crud that has built up and dump the lot into the fuel filter in one go It's often recommended to change the fuel filter after the first tank of bio-diesel (Sometimes the 2nd too!) for this reason.

It might be worth chucking in a tank of V-Power diesel or some of these BG-something-something additives now and then as these can help break up contaminants and stave off fuel-filter clogging.