Mondeo Fuel filter

Something on my 2004 petrol Mondeo might be of interest. Decided to change the inline fuel filter. Should be every 50000 miles and now done nearly 120000. In theory it should have been changed once when it was a company car (mine, I bought it from co) but I suspect it hadn't and the one I took off was a Ford part, suggesting original. No sign of any problem so thought I was maybe overcautious, but for £6 why take a chance?

Interesting thing is before change mpg was about 38 after a decent run but now it has gone up to > 42 mpg (trip computer for both, if it can be believed). At that rate it will soon pay for itself, apart from benefit of protecting the injection system. Anybody else noticed this? I'd have thought if anything it would use more fuel as less restriction, but I'd hope the kit was good enough to avoid this.

Another thing – the Haynes manual says to remove the fuel pump fuse and run the engine till it dies, to depressurise before disconnecting pipes. But it doesn't say which fuse, and the fuel pump doesn't appear on any of the wiring diagrams! No problem as the top of the pump is under the back seat and it's easy to pull off the connector. But on reconnecting, the options on the trip computer had been reset. Don't know if it would be same if just the fuse removed. Also noticed the mpg reading is livelier. Previously if it was on about 35 mpg cos hadn't been far recently, on a run it would rise by 0.1 mpg over 20-odd miles, too unresponsive to be any help for economical driving. Now it's pretty good, better than some I've seen where it flickers about too much to be any use – 10 mpg when you accelerate, 999 when you ease off or go downhill.

When refitting the fuel pump connector, it seemed to go on with a more positive click than I expected, maybe an iffy connection is the explanation, it feeds the tank level sender unit as well as the pump.

Apologies for waffle, but it might interest somebody!

Codey