Hi Hawkeye.

Thank you kindly for posting your fuel filter images suing the brickboard image loader through your brickboard.com account profile.

This filter appears to be original, doubtful, or may have been replaced once.

The filter media is wholly saturated. You have rust inside the fuel filter container, so there's been some water inside there.

The sludge may be a combination of captured particulates and heavier hydrocarbon compounds.

Also, there may be an oil and water mix in that sludge.

A good possibility of microbial activity eating the hydrocarbons at times, possibly, if your Volvo 240 sat for any time, certainly in the ethanol-era gasoline. (Think of the oil eating microbes feasting all along the Mexico Gulf and into the Atlantic ocean after that oil drilling platform explosion some time bac.)

As fuel circulates, consider the interior side of the low pressure synthetic rubber fuel lines. The rubber inside the low pressure fuel line can slough off in minor particles the fuel filter collects.

The lee side of the filter indicates a mostly intact filter media, though well saturated. Where the back shows on the interior side of the filter may indicate a pending breach of the filter, or merely supersaturation, so the smallest particles and compound can stain through the red filter media. Yet the filter, along the folds as you show so nicely here, do not indicate a collapse of the filter through complete clogging in spite of the interior side support.

Thank you for posting these on the brickboard. I wish we'd all use the brickboard image loader. I don't like the image hosting sites.

Thank you,

Sure Happy it's Thursday (all day long)! (Or happy Friday eve!)

MacDuffed.
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The Volvo 164: The Mightiest of All Volvo Automobiles in Perpetuity