Fuel Filter

So, on the past long weekend my driver and me have bought and changed the fuel filter. It was spoilt because of the bad quality diesel sold on Russian petrol pumps. Last week the temperature fell below zero and this resulted in a condensate forming in the fuel tank. Water reached the fuel filter and the car was displaying an error continuously on the computer screen. The challenge was to locate and understand which one of the two filters was affected. It could have been the one under the hood or the one which is situated at the exit of the fuel tank. Obviously, as the fuel tank was under the car it would be quite difficult to change the fuel filter there, as we have not got such equpment, which could lift a 2.7 tonne car to a height of 2 metres. So we knew that the system was interconnected but the fuel filter at the exit of the tank is much stronger and  universal and rarely needs replacing and therefore we hoped that be replacing the one under the hood the error on the screen would disappear. Under the hood it was situated under the second fuel pump, which extremely difficult to unscre. We had to borrow an electric scew driver from the electricians to do it, as by ordinary human hands and a spanner it was impossible to do. We changed the filter, which is quite small in size( I expected it to be bigger) and th error disappeared. Again, I have enriched my knowledge of automobile mechanics. Our future plan is to monitor the condition of the car and if something breaks try to fix it without the help of official Toyota workshops, which by the way do not always do the job and just leave the old filter but reset the computer with a special program. The old fuel filter is displayed above. ( a clean one for a landcruiser is supposed to be grey)

Reparing again..

This year in july my fathers car turned three years old and the warranty finished. We travelled to Tver' in summer and a small stone hit the windscreen and formed a crack. Untill october the insurance company was finding a place where we could repair our car and they told us to go to an unofficial Toyota workshop, claiming that it is reliable. After we got our car repaired thei we noticed that thee new winscreen allowed wind to pass through on the top. On day it rained and the water went thriugh, down the "torpedo" and floded the comfort blocks of the car. This resulted in the wipers turning on randomle, headlights not turning off and other electronic issues.Then my driver and I went to the Toyota official workshop and asked how much the repair would cost and they said approximately 92 thousand roubles for three blocks of comfort. We decided that they were lying to us because water could not simply kill the entire brains of the computer, so we decided to fix it ourselves:) We dismantled the entire floor and part under the hood and tried to dry the computers. We used fans. It was an extremely difficult task as the car had lots of protection against ordinary people trying to repair it themselves. We spent about 1.5 hours to dismantle it and then we put the fans on. We managed to expose the steering an put some oil on it so that it works better. The main difficulty was to lovate these computers and finding the right ways of deassembling the car and then putting all the parts back as they were. I have learned alot about how to locate where wires go and how to carefully deassemble car parts and not brake them. Photographs helped to remember where some parts went( but thise were not on my camera, my photos are above) I also understood how to lubricate car parts. Our next step will be replacing the fuel filter which is under the fuel pump. I will update on that as well.