Engine on and working ok

The adventures of Skipper Splodge and mack
Ian Cheek
Mon 31 May 2010 15:13
So a little more on our engine failure and how we were saved by £5 item from ebay.
 
The engine had been running well, then just lost power, it could be started, and then lost power again and stopped, to the point that it wouldn't start again. All looked well on inspection, and no we hadn't run out of fuel. It turned over ok, so no electrical problem, so it must be fuel. With the engine to hot to work on we thought we'd leave it to cool down a bit. This gave us plenty of time to start hypothesising on possible problems.
 
It had to be a fuel problem, concerned that if we had dirty fuel, and it had got as far as the injectors, they would need to be taken out, and the engine would need to be still warm to get them out, and with no blow torch to warm them up, we better start working on the warm engine.
 
Just a thought as we are expecting dirty fuel, we should change the primary fuel filter. So that is were we started. The Box storing the tea bag had to be sacrificed to make a container to collect the diesel and bits as we took of the old filter. This remove a new one was put on, but then we had the problem of refilling the system. The diesel feed from the tank did not have a cut of valve, but instead an anti siphon loop to stop the fuel spilling when you removed the primary fuel filter, a good design in one way, but not good for us as we now needed to fill the filter.
 
we tried a number of ways filling the filter by pouring fuel down the bleed screw, and the securing screw of the filter, but without susses. Prior to the trip I had seen on ebay a fuel/air transfer pump for a £5, it came with a hand pump and a number of hoses. This was the answer one of the hoses would fit into the spare feed ports on the filter, and away we went the filter was full. Bleed the rest of the system and up she ran.
 
We did find that the engine had no oil, so we blamed Skipper Splodge and Mack for hiding it as we always do, we have topped up the oil but will be monitoring it closely.