Vauxhall Corsa B (1993 - 2000) - 1993 1.5d Bleeding Diesel fuel filter

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Sun 27 Jan 2008 11:58
1993 1.5d Bleeding Diesel fuel filter - Cornish Lass
My hubby has a 1.5D Corsa, on which he changed the fuel filter yesterday. According to the manual, there is a bleed screw on the top of the filter housing, which you bleed until it flows with diesel, to ensure no air in the system. He tried this, even taking the screw right out instead of the 2 turns the manual recommends, and no fuel appears. The car struggled to run initially, but he bled air at the injector hoses, and this seems to have improved things.

Just for argument sake, he looked at my Astra 1.7TD, which has an indentical filter arrangement, tried to bleed that (bearing in mind he hadn't changed the filter here, so assume it would flow with diesel as soon as bleed screw opened), and again no fuel appeared. Astra then ran rough until he bled air at the injector hoses again.

Whats going on here? Any advice appreciated please.

Thanks, CL

Edited by Webmaster on 27/01/2008 at 13:09

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Sun 27 Jan 2008 12:28
Bleeding Diesel fuel filter - Number_Cruncher
Whats going on here?

There's a bit of mis-information in the manual (Haynes?). The fuel is pumped from the tank by the low pressure, or transfer pump inside the fuel injector pump - you might say the fuel is actually sucked from the tank, through the filter to the engine.

So, there's nothing wrong. Taking that screw out, I would expect to see exactly what you did see - nothing!

The best way to deal with these is to have a can of diesel handy, and fill up the new filter with diesel before fitting it. Then, when you start it, keep it revving while the air goes through - for this reason, perhaps better to do on a warmed up engine rather than revving straight from a cold start. There will be some air that gets in, but these systems are self bleeding. So, once you have the engine running, it will purge the air out after a while.

So, without any other priming pump, the bleed screw on the filter housing is truly a red herring, and on the Vauxhalls I've owned and worked on has never been disturbed by me.

Number_Cruncher
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Sun 27 Jan 2008 21:02
Bleeding Diesel fuel filter - Railroad.
I would agree with much of that except that I find it's usually better to allow the engine to idle while it bleeds rather than rev it.

By revving it the engine will tend to consume fuel faster than the pump can draw it, and will therefore cut out. Allowing it to idle often results in a quicker bleeding process......
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Sun 27 Jan 2008 22:12
Bleeding Diesel fuel filter - Number_Cruncher
Our experiences clearly differ Railroad. Although I've only tried not revving a couple of times, I have had a lot of trouble. Typically, I rev the engine, it bogs down for a few seconds, kept running purely by it's own inertia, then it clears, and the job's done.

When I haven't revved the engine, I end up cranking the engine over (with appropriate breaks for the battery to recover and the starter to cool) for the best part of 10 minutes - I couldn't recomend that approach.

Number_Cruncher
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Sun 27 Jan 2008 18:08
1993 1.5d Bleeding Diesel fuel filter - slowdown avenue
its a long time now but seem to remember the same thing happening to me.read your hand book you may have to turn it over for 10 seconds and once you get it running keep it high revs for a bit. iam sure its not a big problem . you could try doing it over again in a different order. i just cant rember exactly.
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