Hi, welcome aboard. My name is Mark Corke from BoatUS Magazine. Today we're going
to be bleeding a diesel engine. We previously changed the fuel filter on
this engine, but when you change a fuel filter, it introduces air into the system,
and the whole idea of bleeding it is that we have to get that air out. Now, a
fuel system on a diesel engine is a closed system, so in other words if
there's any air in there, the engine will either not start, or if it does
start, it will die. So what we have to do to bleed that out is we use what's called
the fuel lift pump on the engine and we manually pump that to pump air out. And
I'm going to take you through the steps to do that. It's not particularly
difficult but to many people believing a diesel engine is seeing
something of a black art. So let's get started. Right, so here's the fuel filter
right here below my knee and this is the fuel line, going along here, goes around
here and it comes to here. This is the lift pump. And then from there it goes up
this braided hose to the secondary fuel filter. Now, what's going to happen is
because we changed the fuel filter here we've got air in this filter. We have to
pump that out. So the first thing to do is to get an oil absorbent pad under the
filter because we will spill some fuel. I'm then going to use a wrench and undo
this banjo nut. You don't need to take it all the way out, but this is on the
pressure side of the pump. So we pump the pump and then the fuel will come out. So we
have a rag handy and you'll notice I'm wearing gloves because I don't want to
get diesel fuel on my hands. So I've cracked this open just half a turn and
now I'm going to start pumping.
And I can see some bubbles coming out of here mixed with a bit of fuel. So I'm
just going to keep pumping until they get a steady stream of fuel coming out.
Right, I've got a nice steady stream of fuel there now. So what I'm going to do
now is as I'm pumping we're getting a nice steady stream of fuel out there so
I'm going to get the wrench on there and as I pump down I'm just going to tighten
that up so that there's no chance of getting air back in there. Now, sometimes
if the fuel system was completely empty we'd have to crack the injectors at the
injector pump here, and the injectors on the engine here, too. But we don't have to
do that because we only changed the primary fuel filter so I know that this
filter bowl here will be full of fuel. So there's absolutely no need to do that. As
I said, if if we were replacing this filter too then we'd have to loosen these
off here and we do exactly what we've just done there until we saw a fuel
bubble out of here, then we shut that off. But we should be good to go now so I'm
just going to wipe up the fuel and we'll give it a go and see if the engine will
start and run properly. Right, so we're now back at the helm, we've put the deck
back down, we cleaned everything up. Should be good to go so we're just going
to run the engine now just to make sure everything is good.
(Buzzing of boat turning on)
(Engine starting)
(Sound of engine and water bubbling)
I've just started the engine. It sounds great.
There's no cough. There's no splutters, so I think the next time we go out we
should not have an issue. So it didn't take me very long, it was very
straightforward, and as I said at the beginning of the video, everybody
thinks of it as some sort of black art, which it really isn't, but it's a good
skill to learn. For more on this and for other videos go to BoatUS.com/Magazine
Thank you very much for watching and we'll see you next time.