I changed the filters on my '89 and '90. These are my notes:
Fuel Filter on the 1989 Corolla 4AF changed 2011.10.23
This is a filter with a transparent body. It was very easy to change. It only involves 2 hoses and clipping the filter to a bracket on the fire wall
Fuel Filter on the 1990 Corolla 4AFE changed 2011.10.25
This is a hard filter to change. It has a metal body and is held by two bolts to the right side (USA drivers side) of the firewall, near the bottom of the wall.
Remove the battery - or at least disconnect the negative battery terminal and cover the battery with a towel.
Jack up the car and remove the driver's side front tire.
Unplug the sensor from the air filter box and remove both halves of the box. (remove 3 bolts with 12 mm heads that hold the bottom of the box.
Remove section of the air intake between the air filter box and the throttle. This is a rubber channel with resonating cavities that are attached to the side of it. A few hoses pass over it and are clipped to its sides, but none goes into it.
Remove the vapor canister ( AKA charcoal canister). Unhook two hoses from its top and and remove 2 bolts with 10 mm heads that hold it to the side of the engine compartment.
From the engine compartment: Remove the top banjo bolt connection on the fuel filter with a 17 mm socket. It's only supposed to be installed with 22 ft lbs of torque, but I chose to break it loose with a breaker bar and a length of pipe to extend the handle.
Loosen the bottom connection on the fuel filter with a 14 mm line wrench. This was the difficult part. The connection was on tight. (It's only supposed to be put on with 22 ft lbs of torqe.) The idea tool for this would would a line wrench head that fits on the end of an extension. ( Like
http://www.northerntool.com/shop/too...-_-1206-_-CONF) My local Autozone has a similar kit that I didn't know about till I had finished this job. ) With that tool you could disconnect the line working from the wheel well and looking up at the bottom of the canister. Not having such a tool, I had to use a line wrench working from the top, in the engine compartment. The wrench was so close to the bottom of the compartment that I didn't have room to slip a length of pipe over it to gain leverage. Instead I used a length of pipe to pry on the side of the wrench and got the nut to turn. To get it the rest of the way off, I was able to work from the wheel well, using an open end wrench slanted upward.
You don't want to round off the nut that holds the bottom connection, so I think it is important to break it free with a line wrench (like a box end wrench missing part of one side of the hexagon) not just an open end wrench.
The bolts that mount the filter to the engine compartment go through rubber washers. As I was struggling to get the bottom connection off, the whole filter would twist. It probably didn't twist enough to deform the gas line, but I played it safe. I loosed the bolts and slipped a piece of wood from a paint stick between the filter and the engine compartment wall. Then I re-tightened them so the filter wouldn't twist so much.
Working in the engine compartment, remove the 2 bolts with 10 mm heads that hold the fuel filter to the firewall. Remove the old fuel filter.
The new filter should have two washers. The Microguard 33294 brand fuel filter that I bought had 4. (The Wix 33294 brand fuel filter that they showed me at the auto parts was supposed to have two, but the package had none and I didn't buy it.) The old filter had a washer on either side of the banjo bolt on the top connection , which is the one with the little bracket by it. It had no washers on the bottom connection.
The filter has rubber isolators that the bracket bolts go through. Watch that they don't pop-out and get lost. Loosely connect the bottom fuel line to the filter before you bolt the filter to the firewall.
Linear Mode
