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Thanks for posting and giving all a heads up on keeping an eye on this on our own trucks. Is the GPR something i should replace on my 03' just to be safe so this doesn't happen?
Found this old thread on a search. Bumping to the top as a heads up for the safety of all. Subscribing for any updates. And, finally, I wanted to point out the difference in heating element design between the OP's and my fuel bowl heating element. Will return with a photo to show the difference, once the photo is uploaded.
Truck is still happy and fine. The replaced bowl heating element has had no problems. As I recall, the one that shorted out and caused the problem was stock. This happened shortly after I had gotten the rig and before I'd done any modifications to anything.
Portsample... I finally got it together to post pictures comparing fuel heaters.
Starting off with a repost of your photo, for ease of comparison:
Then comparing your fuel heater with the design I have, from a random pic online, as it shows the heater laying on a white table similar to how you arranged yours in your photo:
And then finally a photo I just took of this style fuel heater in my fuel bowl:
This is the only type of fuel heater that I've personally seen on a 99-03 7.3. I am intrigued at the difference between your fuel heater that may have contributed to your engine fire, versus the fuel heater style as shown in the latter two photos.
And what is MOST interesting, is that out trucks were built in the exact same month... November of 1999.
Do we have a smoking (literally) gun? Is the OP's heater is aftermarket? It looks like the earlier style OEM heater... and I've never noticed the difference until this thread.
I think it was a design change, Probably cause a lot of them were failing. And I saw it in a thread here somewhere. (I haven't found it in search yet) Still looking......
I'm sometimes too lazy to follow links, so I'll put one of the pics in that thread right here for folks like me who don't like clicking links, but there are others to see if you follow the link above:
What is interesting is that the OP's truck, with the old fuel bowl heater, was built in November 1999... but my truck was built in the exact same month, with the new fuel bowl heater. I would think that a change like this would have occurred with the 99.5 update in the previous March.
Ford and International's joint publication that details the design changes over the years in their "7.3L Diesel Anthology" does not reveal this design change. In that publication, Ford only shows the old style heater:
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