[svHyLyte]

I've had one of those days.

Doing a simple oil and filter change so head to the chandlery for oil and filters.

Start with the Racor which should take precisely 3 seconds to change the filter.

But theres gunk in the bowl. So I open the stupid reverse direction valve to clear it, but the gunk won't come out. So I pull the whole Racor out - who mounts them there? And pull it apart and clean it but cant get to all the gunk so unscrew the plastic bolt in the side of the bowl.

Plastic bolt breaks.

Back to the chandlery for an $11 plastic Racor bolt.
Fix fuel system, and final fuel filter and run engine to make sure fuel is OK and warm the oil for extraction.
Pump out the oil, replace with new oil... THEN realise I didnt change the bloody oil filter!
Pump out the cold new oil now mixed with old oil.
Back to the chandlery 3 time in a day for more oil.

Wasted $30 of oil.



BOATS!

Mark--The next time you need to clean the sediment bowl, the easiest method is to use a pressurized can of WD-40 with the long plastic straw attached. With the filter element removed from the filter canister, the WD-40 straw can be inserted through the vanes of the vortex generator. A few blasts of the WD-40 at several different positions will dislodge the debris that will collect at the bottom of the bowl. A splash of diesel will wash it out nicely. It may take a few "cycles" to completely clean the bowl but the process does work quite nicely. On our boat I have a plastic tube connected the the "drain" spout on the underside of the sediment bowl. By connecting this to a small bronze hand pump I am easily able to suction out the debris in the sediment bowl. The small amount of WD-40 that remains in the bowl easily mixes with the fuel and creates no problems.

FWIW...

 

[svHyLyte]

Hi Barry,

If i unscrewed the oil filter I would have lost all the oil into the engine pan. So I had to pump it out anyway.

When I did the oil looked pretty murkey... It was definitly at the 150 hours, maybe a few seconds more, so I opted for a new gallon of oil.

So now I have a gallon with about 2 cups old oil in it. Being loath to waste that much money I am wondering what to do with it.

Any ideas?

Mark

What motor do you have that you cannot release the oil filter without first pumping the oil out of the engine? I've had both a Yanmar and a 4-108 and in both cases, the oil quickly drains into the Oil Pan/Sump and one can remove the filter canisters for replacement. If one simply slips a plastic shopping bag over the old filter canister before removing it from the engine, the canister simply drops into the bag with little oil spilled into the engine drip pan. Moreover, considering how little oil there may remain in a filter cartridge, perhaps a pint, if you over looked changing the cartridge before adding fresh oil it would have only modest impact on the fresh oil that would be rapidly cleaned with a new filter cartridge added after the fact.

One thing you could do with the oil you've collected is to save it until you need a fuel fill and then dump it into the fuel tank before filling up. If I recall correctly, your boat holds about 38 gallons of fuel so the little bit of lube oil won't have much effect on a full tank.

FWIW...