My son has an '87 F150 302 that wouldn't start the other day. I'm not much of a mechanic, but I found out it had spark so I thought fuel might be the issue. I replaced the fuel filter and it started up after just a few cranks.

It's been three days and it's doing the same thing. Initially it would try to fire up, but then die and now just turns over and over with no firing at all. Same as when I first looked at it.

Can fuel filters be bad out of the box? Is there something else I might try and look at?

 

When you turn the key on, can you hear the fuel pump? I suspect it's a fuel pump problem, either with the pump itself, or in the relay. You really need to check the fuel pressure to see for sure.

 

If you have trash in your gas tank it could be gumming up the new filter already.

 

The only check I did on the fuel pump was to listen for it and I heard the hum when the key is first turned on. After changing the filter, the truck started pretty much right away, so I assumed it was ok.

The truck seemed to run fine before this issue. It seems like it would have had to have a lot of gunk in the tank to clog the filter after only 3 days, but fuel filters are cheap and easy to change so if the feedback heads down that road, at least it's an easy fix.

Thanks for the feedback so far.