Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Fuel Pump and Intake Filter

I've been reading alot lately about fuel pumps and intake filters. So here are my questions. Can a crappy fuel pump really affect mileage? And where is the intake filter on my car? How do I change it? Thanks.

I dont think the fuel pump would really effect your mileage that bad, but i could be wrong. if anything the filter in the tank would get clogged and that would cause you to get bad mileage. The filter doesnt really get clogged either, when i had to replace my fuel pump and 127,000 miles the filter was still clean. To get at it you have to take off the back seat and remove the whole fuel pump, but you should really try replacing stuff like the fuel filter, air filter, spark plugs and wires and see if you get better mileage before trying to do something like that.

Your 98 doesn't have the endemic problem with the inlet filter of the fuel pump plugging up with hardly any contamination. That didn't happen until part way through the 99 model year when they started using the returnless fuel system.

The fuel intake filter is in the fuel tank. You need to remove the fuel pump from the tank to clean or change it. Unless you have a returnless system it is highly unlikely that you need to do anything with it. If you insist on trying, access is from removing the back seat and removing an access panel.

A weak fuel pump would cause the engine to run very poorly under load (hard acceleration, climbing a hill), especially when the tank is low. This kind of thing would happen long before you would notice any significant drop in fuel economy.

you do have a fuel filter on the underside of the car... next to the passenger side rear wheel... the intake filter is in the engine compartment, to the far right in a box... there are some clips around it, open the clips on the air box all around, and lift off the lid of the air box and ta da! there's your intake air filter. You can pick up a new air filter at autozone for cheap, its definately something worth doing, much better for the engine and brings back some gas mileage. I would also suggest replacing the fuel filter, as thats required every year to be done.