Couple of lessons

[Jens]

I thought I would share a couple of lessons I learned today.

#1) I have an aftermarket fuel filter. A reputable brand name, It has a clear bowl under the filter. The bowl screws to the filter and the whole thing screws under the head assembly. There are nice pretty red o-rings between the various components. Top quality stuff. Further, as you get it from the factory, the fuel filter and bowl normally do not want to separate because they are real tight. Out of two new filter assemblies I ended up destroying (and I mean completely) one filter and the other filter is quite banged up.
One of the o-rings between bowl and filter got forced out and was actually cut. This was the diesel filter which had no fuel running through it at the time (I was running on motor oil) and which probably got to 70C. The bowl was on fairly tight but I had no problems unscrewing it by hand so it wasn't anywhere near as tight as the factory makes it.

I am assuming that this failure was due to heat combined with the tightness of the joint. I don't know if the seal got soft and flowed out or what. Point is, when heating up veg oil before the filter, like many people do, try staying on the colder side of things. This particular joint had held fine for the longest time but this year I am running with a hotter thermostat and at twice the load I ran at for last year so it does get toasty in the enclosure.

I replaced the seal (thank God I had a spare) and will mop up tomorrow. This time the bowl is screwed on as lightly as I dare and I will still have to check for leakage.

The filter is attached to the engine via a bracket so it sees a fair bit of vibration - I guess somehow this could be a contributing factor.

While I was checking things out I also heard an odd noise in the engine as if there is too much clearance somewhere in there but that could be my mind playing tricks on me.

#2) High pressure injector heaters. I have two of them, one for each cylinder and they come with high temperature attachment string on both ends of the heater. I had wrapped them around the injector lines and tightened the strings as best as I could but there was still some slop. The manufacturer recommends to not cover up these heaters in any way lest they overheat. I have purchased some high temperature teflon tape but have not yet installed it.
Well, as it turned out, one heater, the one that was looser, broke down in two spots and was no longer working. I am attributing this failure to the vibration and would suggest that people do not run these without securing them properly (but watch that they don't get too hot when over-wrapping)

Hope this is useful to somebody.

Jens  ..... <it never stops>

[vdubnut62]

Hey jens, did you ever "ding" the  expansion chamber, to stop the ping?
Ron

[vdubnut62]

Well, at least you know that it isn't a mission critical problem.
Ron