Right. A couple of E fags cut with methanol, and I feel a whole lot better.........
Air ingress makes me feel like an total novice, and I'm supposed to be trained.......
Some things that could be added to the wiki.
First thing about mechanicing, never presume anything.
Classic example, I had loss of power.
I have a normal filter, followed by a good quality inline filter, which I use to bypass the normal filter on the side of the road, makes life easy. I find a crack in the glass tube of the inline filter, so obviously, that's where the air is coming from. Pull it out, still got problems, so obviously, the normal filter is blocked.
Change that, do a 70 mile run, goes fine. Turn round to come back, loosing power again.
Next morning, starts up and runs, no problem for 10 miles, return trip, goes like a dog, Plus an injector starts rattling. Pretending that isn't happening at the moment.
Into dry dock, clear pipe before IP, air coming in.
I've previously fitted a 8mm pipe from tank to lift pump, so obviously that has air getting in. Check unions, take them apart, new jubilee clips, still getting in. Drop tank, check unions on tank, maybe one was leaking.
Still got air getting in.
Change lift pump for known good one, still got problem. Known good lift pump is duff. It won't pump hard enough to pull the veg through the 8mm pipe. There's a lot more air in it than the original 6mm.
Have the brilliant idea of fitting an electric lift pump from a (retches) Freelander. Wire it up, turn it on, it makes an alarming groaning noise, blows a pipe off and squirts veg oil at high pressure all over the engine bay.
Decide at that point it's probably better wait for the new lift pump.
Point being, I could have ordered the lift pump Monday morning, if I hadn't been blinded by presuming it was a pipe leaking. As it turns out, there were air leaks, but that was not the cause of the problem, the lift pump was.
More things I'd add to the Wiki.
Chuck inferior quality filter housing off, and fit quality replacement parts. Be careful what you buy. I wouldn't buy the replacement filter housing I have again. It's a good CAV unit, but the seals are poorly designed, and it's fiddly to change the filter.
The filter cartridges are cheap, but they don't handle veg very well, they have a paper element in them. There are ones with a different element, but can I get anyone to tell me what is what? Not a chance......
Buy some good fuel pipe online, Motor factors want body parts for a short length. When you need it, you need it then, not in two days time.
Keep pipe clips by you.
Collect odd lengths of pipe.
Get an electric lift pump off a (retches again) Freelander. They suck the fuel through like a good 'un. Just don't try to stop it.
Don't be afraid to cut off badly designed or poor quality parts, and move poorly placed parts into better positions. Under normal circumstances, most fuel system parts will never be removed in the lifetime of the vehicle, and filters will only be removed a few times, probably less than once a year. This is all they are designed to do. We need better stuff than that.
Don't put methanol in E fags.
