today, we're not going to talk specifics of who the operator was in this particular circumstance. I think we all can relate to being out, trying to get some work done, and pushing up to the very last minute thinking you've got enough vapor down here in the tank in order to get the job done. Today, that didn't work out so well for that individual. He was out here and got about three-quarters of his job done before he realized that that fuel gauge was actually accurate.
Here we sit with not enough fuel in the tank to keep going. Now, our process here to refuel a modern tractor is actually different than an older one. There are a couple of tips here that I can give you and things that you should know if you're coming from the world of older equipment.
Now, in an old tractor, when you ran a machine out of fuel, the process that you would need to go through in order to refill that machine again, was to fill the tank back up and get up to the engine and crack some injectors open so that you will be able to get that fuel flowing through the fuel pump and up to the engine again. That has changed now in newer tractors. When we're looking at modern equipment, modern machines are all going to have some fuel pump on them.
Now, that pump is going to vary from machine to machine, some of them are going to have electric ones where they're often located down below the floorboards. Some will have mechanical fuel pumps, some may have a vacuum fuel pump. There's a lot of different styles, but any modern tractor is going to have some fuel pump on it. Now, what you're going to do when you run the machine out of fuel, when you've got that air down there is to simply fill the thing back up with fuel again, like I am.
Then crank the engine and let it go, and then the engine should get up and go. The old process of going through and cracking injectors actually can be really harmful on some modern equipment, so when we're talking larger machines, particularly with engines over 75 horsepower, where we have common rail fuel injection on basically everything. Those fuel injectors are running at 30,000 psi, there's a lot of pressure in those lines and actually going and cracking those injectors open can be incredibly dangerous.
If you don't get them sealed back up properly when you crank that key over, you can have fuel come shooting out of say, a little crack or a hole if they're not closed up properly at 30,000 psi. You can imagine the damage that can do to your equipment or your hands or whatever, so piece of modern machinery, keep the tools away from the fuel injection lines. Once you've got this guy good and topped off, all you're going to do is come back over here, close that car back up and turn your key again.
Now, in some machines with an electronic fuel pump, you can just leave it in the run position. Other machines, you're going to actually want to go and crank the engine over if you've got that mechanical fuel pump on there.
[engine start]
Neil: There you go. You can hear the air working its way through there as the fuel start to get back up into the system again, but no more complicated than that. Running a modern piece of equipment out of fuel is not like what it was years ago. We got a lot of guys and they're buying this kind of equipment that have these old preconceived notions about diesel engines and how they used to be, about blowing smoke, being noisy, and having problems.
You running out of fuel and being hard to start in cold weather, a lot of that stuff is just simply not true anymore. If you're looking at a machine like this, you can put those notions behind you and see how easy this was. Legitimately, somebody did actually run this thing out of fuel. I did not fake this in any way.
I hope somebody actually did do this. If you're in the shopping process for a piece of equipment, and we can help or if you have parts of service needs for machines you already have, give us a call on Messicks, we're available at 800-222-3373 or online at messicks.com
