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[engine start noise]
-Neil from Messicks here. Today's Three Minute Thursday.
Today's short conversation is going to be what to do
when you run your tractor out of fuel.
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-Now, today, we're not going to talk specifics of who the operator
was in this particular circumstance.
I think we all can relate to being out,
trying to get some work done,
and pushing up to the very last minute thinking
you've got enough vapor down here in the tank
in order to get the job done.
Today, that didn't work out so well for that individual.
He was out here and got about three-quarters of his job done
before he realized that that fuel gauge
was actually accurate.
Here we sit with not enough fuel in the tank to keep going.
Now, our process here to refuel a modern tractor
is actually different than an older one.
There are a couple of tips here that I can give you
and things that you should know if you're coming from the world
of older equipment.
Now, in an old tractor, when you ran a machine out of fuel,
the process that you would need to go through
in order to refill that machine again,
was to fill the tank back up and get up to the engine
and crack some injectors open so that you will be able to get
that fuel flowing through the fuel pump
and up to the engine again.
That has changed now in newer tractors.
When we're looking at modern equipment,
modern machines are all going to have some fuel pump on them.
Now, that pump is going to vary from machine to machine,
some of them are going to have electric ones
where they're often located down below the floorboards.
Some will have mechanical fuel pumps, some may have a vacuum fuel pump.
There's a lot of different styles, but any modern tractor is going
to have some fuel pump on it.
Now, what you're going to do when you run the machine out of fuel,
when you've got that air down there
is to simply fill the thing back up with fuel again,
like I am.
Then crank the engine and let it go, and then the engine should get up
and go.
The old process of going through and cracking injectors
actually can be really harmful on some modern equipment,
so when we're talking larger machines,
particularly with engines over 75 horsepower,
where we have common rail fuel injection
on basically everything.
Those fuel injectors are running at 30,000 psi,
there's a lot of pressure in those lines
and actually going and cracking those injectors open
can be incredibly dangerous.
If you don't get them sealed back up properly
when you crank that key over,
you can have fuel come shooting out of say,
a little crack or a hole if they're not closed up properly
at 30,000 psi.
You can imagine the damage that can do to your equipment
or your hands or whatever,
so piece of modern machinery, keep the tools away
from the fuel injection lines.
Once you've got this guy good and topped off,
all you're going to do is come back over here,
close that car back up and turn your key again.
Now, in some machines with an electronic fuel pump,
you can just leave it in the run position.
Other machines, you're going to actually want to go
and crank the engine over if you've got
that mechanical fuel pump on there.
[engine start]
-There you go.
You can hear the air working its way through there
as the fuel start to get back up into the system again,
but no more complicated than that.
Running a modern piece of equipment out of fuel
is not like what it was years ago.
We got a lot of guys and they're buying
this kind of equipment that have these old preconceived notions
about diesel engines and how they used to be,
about blowing smoke, being noisy, and having problems.
You running out of fuel and being hard to start in cold weather,
a lot of that stuff is just simply not true anymore.
If you're looking at a machine like this,
you can put those notions behind you and see how easy this was.
Legitimately, somebody did actually run this thing
out of fuel.
I did not fake this in any way.
I hope somebody actually did do this.
If you're in the shopping process for a piece of equipment,
and we can help or if you have parts of service needs for machines
you already have, give us a call on Messicks,
we're available at 800-222-3373 or online at messicks.com.
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