bottom part of preheater unit is off, and going to stay that way until I get
the rebuild kit. For now, I'm going to bypass the unit and go straight to the injector pump.
C
an I leave the electrical plug to the top of the preheater hooked up,
or should I disconnect it.
I have a hard time with the electical plugs, of course its always easy in hindsight, but I spend ALOT of time figuring out how to get the dang things seperated

 

You should disconnect it for good, you'll never need the fuel heater in Calif.
The heater comes on at 70F, if it comes on without any fuel it will get very hot and probably burn up.
Either disconnect the connector or pull the relay for it in the underhood fuse box. Sometimes on a '98 the relay is marked as "spare".

 

You should consider pulling the heater off and leaving it off. As infidel says you will never need it. It will cost you money and time to rebuild/replace it, mine and many others elect. connection melted, they leak air @ that connector and makes it very hard to troubleshoot when that happens. Its an easy thing to do once you get the stuff out of the way. I would not run it too long with the pre-filter bypassed. IMHO you need the filter screen but not the heater. As I said before I removed mine two years ago,maybe longer now, and have never missed it.
Floyd

 

I never needed mine until it got -20 during the winter time. I have just not had the money to replace mine. All it does for me is take a little more cranking time, and a lot more smoke when I start it up in the winter. Other than that, I most likely will not get it fixed. I will just deal with the issue. Just my .02.

 

I believe the heater is the top part of the heater/screen unit?

If I leave the unit in place and just disconnect the elec connection to the heater, won't I still need to rebuild the heater/prefilter unit to keep it from leaking?

I was planning to just bypass the prefilter unit altogether..
Also, I don't know how to get the top of that unit (the heater? above the screen?) off of the engine

Working on it now, appreciate any help thanks

 

if you already have the lower section off, theres an allen bolt up in the center that comes off to take out the preheater, leave the preheater and allen bolt both off and the lower cup and screen will bolt right back up.

 

Thanks I get it...waiting to order new gasket/kit from Geno's to reinstall prefilter screen

I'll need to attach a fitting to the threaded nut on top of the
prefilter housing, so I will have a 3/8" nipple for the fuel hose

Is there anything special I should do, I mean

when I reinstall hoses to the prefilter and pump,
is this the time to put in any special fittings
for future fuel pressure checking?

 

If you want to check fuel pressure, you can use one of the ports on top of the fuel filter housing, or if you want a permanent guage in the cab, you will have to remove the banjo bolt on the injector pump inlet and drill and tap it with a 1/8" NPT thread.

If you do a search under 12V you will find some posts with pics by Infidel that show how to do this.