P2268: Water in Fuel Sensor A Circuit Intermittent
What to do
Have the water trap drained before this is treated as a wiring fault. Water sloshing in the filter housing covers and uncovers the sensor as the car moves, which produces exactly this intermittent pattern — and in that case the sensor is working correctly and telling you something worth knowing. Only if it persists on freshly drained fuel is the circuit itself suspect.
What this code means
The water-in-fuel reading comes and goes rather than remaining steady.
One cause here is not a fault at all, and it is worth eliminating first: water genuinely sloshing. A quantity of water sitting in the filter housing moves with the vehicle, so it can cover and uncover the contacts under braking, cornering or on a slope. The result is a reading that appears and disappears with driving — which is exactly what an intermittent electrical fault looks like, and is instead the sensor working correctly and reporting a real problem.
So the order is: drain the trap first, then decide whether there is an electrical fault. If the intermittent reading stops after draining, there was never a circuit problem. If it continues on clean fuel, the connector at the bottom of the filter housing is the usual culprit.
Likely causes
Start here
- Water present in the fuel filter · easy
- Corroded or loose connector · easy
- Intermittent wiring fault · moderate
Less common
- Faulty water in fuel sensor · easy
Symptoms
Components involved
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Community experience
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