Cummins (or other) oil pump priming during assembly

fitterski · Sep 8, 2017

Jelly sounds like it could work, it certainly won't leak out. Cranking to oil presure before enabling injection is good too although it might require some footwork. It should actually be THE way to start ALL THE TIME. I'm going to give this a try on operating engines (a Deutz F4L912 and a another Cummins 5.9). On the Deutz 4-holer I can keep the he power lever at cutoff until I see oil, on the 5.9 I have an electrical shutoff solenoid that isn't used, I could wire that up or I could just haul the shutoff cable until I see oil.

For the very first start I'll pack some jelly in there anyway, it's cheap insurance. I could be trying a restart in a week or two.

flyerdan · Sep 8, 2017

The petroleum jelly method was called for in the book when I opened up the bottom end of an Oldsmobile diesel for my dad. And of course get the oil filter to absorb as much as you can before installing, that can save a few seconds of dry running.
Agree that it would be nice to have a pre-oiler that could run every time; didn't I read somewhere that about 80% of wear occurs at startup?

fitterski · Sep 9, 2017

flyerdan said:
The petroleum jelly method was called for in the book when I opened up the bottom end of an Oldsmobile diesel for my dad. And of course get the oil filter to absorb as much as you can before installing, that can save a few seconds of dry running.
Agree that it would be nice to have a pre-oiler that could run every time; didn't I read somewhere that about 80% of wear occurs at startup?

I vaguely remember something along those lines too, I'm seriously planning to deploy the starter into that role as far as line ops go. It's a bit like airplane accidents, most of them happen close to ground