New Member Needs Advice

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Dale, at the risk of stating the obvious you need to monitor you fuel status. Should you run that new coach out of fuel you will find a new vocabulary.

Since there are a lot of pilots that hang around this site there may be additional comments, but it is my opinion a fuel gauge is a wonderful way to fill a hole in your instrument panel, but its usefulness generally ends there.

As you get to know your coach you will learn based on your odometer or engine hour meter (if you install one) when you need fuel. It is a certainty you need to know if you have standard fuel or the added auxiliary tank. The difference is about 90 gallons or on a typical 8V92 about 500 miles.

If you run out of fuel you have to prime the engine, and there is no easy way to do that. It can be done but it requires some effort.

[dale farley]

Jon, The pevious owner told me he usually filled up every 500 miles so he never had to worry about running out, so I may do the same. On other motorhomes I've had, I always kept a running ledger of each fill up and mileage, so I shouldn't have a problem with doing the same on this coach.

Unfortunately, I do have experience with running out of diesel before. I've owned several doziers and loaders during the last 12 years and still have 3 diesel tractors and a truck. So I have spent several hours bleeding injectors, fuel lines, and the injection pumps, and getting them primed again. No fun involved here!!! I certainly don't want that to happen while on the road.

Someone told me that I will have to remove the water tanks to replace the sending unit, so I am not too eager to go to all that trouble at this time. Dale

[Orren Zook]

Roadrunner,

I had a bad electrical connection on the back of my fuel guage that cause mine to read more than empty (pointed to the 9:00 on the guage). I was filling at about 1000 miles because I didn't want to go through the work of changing the sending unit. Anyway a nice pothole here caused the guage to start working and me thinking - anyway it wasn't as bad as anticipated and fixed with only a screwdriver and wire end. You might be also be able to check your sending unit at the dash with an ohm meter.

[dale farley]

I suppose I can check the sending unit with an ohm meter, and compare it when it is full to almost empty. Hopefully, I can place voltage across the meter and see if it reads full. I just have to make sue what that voltage is (probably 12v).

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Assuming the fuel filters are full of fuel, the only other thing necessary to prime an 8V92 is to remove the alllen screw in the LH side of the secondary fuel filter base (actually it is above the filter next to the water pump), and through that hole, using whatever means is simpler (I recommend a pump type Round-up garden sprayer) with a fitting to thread in the hole on the filter base run about one or two gallons of fuel. That will run fuel through the lines all the way to the return fuel line.

The bus will start like it never ran out of fuel. Something similar is a pressurized carbonated soda tank, but the cheap pump sprayers are lighter, available almost anywhere, and will do the job.

[dale farley]

That sounds simple enough. I need to look at my engine and see if I understand everything you are saying.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

In the photo you will see the fuel filter just behind the brass belt tensioner on the left near the water pump.

To the left side of the base the filter threads into is the allen headed screw (maybe around 1/4 pipe threads or 5/16 screw thread, just guessing) and if you can adapt a pump up sprayer hose end into that threaded hole you will run fuel through the lines across the top of the head at the injectors and the engine will fire up instantly. When we rebuilt my 8V92 that is how we got fuel to an engine that did not have a single drop of fuel in it. The fuel filters were full of fuel.

[dale farley]

Jon, Thanks for the picture and info. I hope I don't ever need it, but I am going to print it out so I will have it if I do need it.

[dalej]

Dale on the forward wall of the fourth bay there is a panel that needs to either come out or be opened
enough to access the fuel sending unit on top of the tank. The sending unit is in the aft part of the tank. I
had to take the Black tank out, but should have taken all the tanks out, since the panel has a lot of
screws to remove. They are a little hard to remove since being set for a while. I went to all this work to
replace the sending unit and still didn't solve the problem of a intermittent fuel gauge. I grounded the
wire at the sending unit and the gauge worked so I thought it was a sending unit problem, not so. Most
of the time the gauge works fine, but after sitting for some time, seems the problem comes back. My
wife thinks the bus just needs to keep rolling to keep the bugs out.