My car idles perfectly, but when you give it gas it spudders and doesn't have any power. My dad seems to think it might be the fuel filter, but I'm not sure. Any suggestions?

 

I also had a vibration at idle and thought my fuel filter could be bad. I bought the filter and have not installed. All the info I find says that the filter should never go bad, it's "life time."

Did you put one in? did it help?

good luck!

 

I would check your Coilpacks, plugs or MAF first off. The Fuel Filter is less likely to cause the condition you've described..

 

my if it is not a misfire issue (sounds that way to me) pull the throttle body off (very easy to do) and spray down the inside with carb cleaner until all the build up is off, then do a throttle body alignment. A friend had similar symptoms on his Jetta. Him and I cleaned the TB and issues were resolved.

 

The fuel filter should be changed about every 30k miles. Its not hard and only takes 10mins and about $15

 

Never heard of a Fuel Filter being lifetime. Don't think they have come up yet with a self cleaning Fuel Filter Change it and see what happens. I had a tad of a rough idle when I first got the car and I changed the plugs, the fuel filter etc. but it was still there, so I gave it a Seafoam treatment that suppose to clean out your intake and fuel system. I put a half a can into a shallow container and then had it slowly sucked in via a vaccum source. I used the one by the FPR. It will cause some major smoking out of the exhaust but after the treatment the idle was a lot smoother than before.
Have you changed your coolant sensor recently? That is another issue that people say could cause rough idle. I changed my recently and I still had the black coolant sensor in there. I swapped it out with the new and improved Green sensor. No difference as far as I can tell but people say it does help.