Thank you silver surfe & adam1811, read your posts and thought oh well I can't do any harm changing a filter. Well went out today to local VW bought said filter and fitted. The old filter was black but I understand they all come out this colour, but the fuel left behind in the canister was black !! and I mean black you could not see the bottom of the canister. I cannot post pictures yet but when I poured the fuel out into a clear container you could not see through it at all.
Anyway new filter installed (did air filter as well) I fired her up and went for a short drive to get the fuel going and then check there were no leaks. After checking there were no leaks went to find a bit of open road to open her up and whoooosh !! what a difference, the revcounter spun round the dial all the way to 5000 whereas before after it got to 3000 acceleration would tail off and it would barely reach 4000. There is no hint of hesitation and accelerates smoothly all the way through the rev range.
I am now a very happy bunny and feel I now have the car that I used to have. It just about smoothes out the sting I got when I had to pay £200 as my 50% contribution to get the ABS pressure sensor
problem fixed.
So for me the fuel filter change appears to be a 100% fix and I didn't even get round to taking the EGR off and cleaning that out. So for the price of a filter and no more than 30 mins of your time for those of you suffering this
problem it's worth giving it a go.
