Should You Pre Fill an Oil Filter? Should You Pre Fill a Fuel Filter?

today we're going to be discussing whether you should pre fill your oil fuel filter and why you should or why you shouldn't we're going to make this video on one of the more controversial subjects in the automotive and diesel field whether you should pre fill your oil filter or your fuel filter before putting them on your engine ok the first thing I'm going to say is how many people out there run different viscosities and their engine manufacturers recommend how many people out there go away over your oil change intervals how many people put diesel in your gas engine or gas and your diesel engine not too many people do because they know it will probably hurt their engine or that their engine wasn't designed for a different viscosity or different fuel type and pretty much all manufacturers tell you not to pre-fill your oil filter or your fuel filter yet I see people do it all the time so here we have a cat fuel filter and you can see step one is actually a non step and the step is to not pre fill the filter with fuel and most oil filters are going to have this sticker as well now is there ever a reason to do it or is it strictly forbidden no matter what the circumstances are well we're going to sketch this in this video and I'm gonna be going over some components and some rationale at least what I've applied in my career field now what's the manufacturer rationale for not pre filling your fuel and oil filters well the reason is most people fill from the center and I'm going to show you a video here why you don't want to do that so we have a cat oil filter here and I've cut it and this is the dirty side the outside and you can see the media that catches the dirt and the particles you want your oil to get on this side so that when you're filling it we're getting to get on the clean side which I've mentioned is the center of the filter and what is the best way to do that well we're going to talk about that in this next little clip so we have our new filter here same filter this is on a c7 and c9 they use these style filters and there's your Center the clean side now it's the best way to fill these obviously it's going to be on the smaller holes which is the dirty side and the best way to do that is use a small funnel and yes it will take a little longer to fill but this is the right way to fill it now what about fuel filters so we have a fuel filter for this cat engine and you'll notice the holes are a lot smaller so obviously you can't fill it with a small funnel but there's still a right way to do it so you can get these little caps that come on a lot of parts that are dust control caps and you just stick it in the center portion of the filter and then when you fill it it will trickle into the smaller holes and fill from the outside inward which is what you want to do and that's the right way to fill a filter now where's the best place to get fuel from the tank is not the best place to get fuel from most filter housings fuel filter housings are going to have a comp you check fitting that is this fitting here right there and pretty much all cats are going to have them different manufacturers will have them - this is a c7 sometimes they will not have the fitting themselves you have to remove either the bleeder plug or the pressure checking port there and you're going to want to make a little hose and this setup will cost you about now maybe 60 80 bucks for a high-pressure hose and a little ball valve and then what you'll do is you'll just connect to that copy check fitting with the engine running and open your ball valve and now put filtered clean fuel into whatever container you want to use and that's the best place to get fuel from now you can see from that video the reason you don't want to fill from the center is because the center is the clean side of the filter on pretty much all filters they fill from the outside and then the clean fluids go in from the center so when you're filling from the center even though it's a clean source of oil or fuel you're potentially installing contaminants or debris on the clean side of that now if you think about it oh it's just going in your oil rail well where the places that the oil comes out of there's only a couple places if it's a diesel engine it's going to be a bearing you see the grooves in this bearing that's debris that has gotten onto that bearing and slightly damaged it I could also be a piston cooling jet so basically you have your bearings or your piston cooling Jets that's pretty much all the place the oil can get out from those oil rails and it's under pressure so if it clogs a piston cooling jet you're going to lose the oil cooling abilities of that cooling jet for that cylinder and you're going to lose that cylinder if it comes out of your bearing you're gonna get the vertical grooves or the grooves that you see in that bearing there because it's under pressure and the only place that can come out of is the bearing now is there ever a reason to pre-fill your filters yes yes there is uh when I do know ange on mostly trucks and RVs because I work in a diesel shop I pre fill the fuel filters and I typically do not pre fill the oil filter and here's my rationale for that if you ever get injectors they're going to have a sheet of paper that comes with them that's going to state that if you put air into the injector rail and you fire your injectors without being primed with fuel it'll damage the injectors however they also recommend that you don't pre fill your fill fuel filters so those two ideas are kind of conflicting with each other so they don't want you to pre-fill your fuel filters so you're installing air into that system yet installing air into that system damages injectors can also damage your high pressure fuel pump because diesel is a lubricant for the injectors and high pressure fuel pump now why do I not typically pre-fill my oil filters for the contamination reason not only that it makes installing them a lot here that and typically starting that engine the oil pump moves a vast volume of fluid and it's only going to have low or very little oil pressure for a couple seconds now if it cranks for a little while it will typically build oil pressure before it even cranks and an engine at idle is under very light load so that's the rationale that the manufacturers use so not only that but there's always all your left in the bearings and in the rail before doing the oil change so you're not really hurting your engine by not pre filling your oil filter now I do pre fill the oil filters sometimes and I'm going to tell you when if the engine has not been ran for a very long time or an engine rebuild has just been performed so if rebuilds been performed all the oils been drained out of that engine the oil rail the bearings even though typically they'll have assembly lube or oil on the bearings installed when installing the new bearings and also if the engine sat for a long time most of the oil is drained off of the bearings but if you just pull the vehicle in drain the oil you don't necessarily have to pre-fill the fillers the oil filter now most people know if you've done diesel services before that if you don't pre fill that fuel filter not only can you potentially damage the high pressure fuel pump and the injectors or at least reduce their longevity they are really hard to prime if you don't pre-fill the filters so what are you supposed to do well I'm going to show you here in this little video you

Channel: Adept Ape

Views: 410,040

Rating: 4.4395995 out of 5

Keywords: Oil Filter, Pre Fill Oil Filter, Pre Fill Fuel filter, Oil Change, Diesel Mechanic, Diesel Engine, Cat Mechanic, Engine Bearing, Pre Fill, Cat Engine, C7, C15, Fuel Filter, Engine Wear

Id: P6MLDH0zTpw

Length: 8min 41sec (521 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 08 2016