Bongo Fury

Used my new pela pump yesterday, but it took the best part of 4 hours to suck out about 5 litres of oil! Followed the suggested procedure by running the engine for a while to heat the oil, then stuck the pipe down the dipstick hole until a definite contact was made with the bottom of the sump, punped the pela about 15 times and sure enought the oil started to flow, but should it be such a slow process? I had to give up in the end as darkness was falling! Any advice will be much appreciated, Mike.

Shouldn't take more than 15mins...Perhaps the tube opening was "flat" against the sump bottom and couldn't suck properly. Try pulling it back out a centimeter.

Haydn, I tried that and still it made no differance, I think for a test I will try sucking the 5 litres I extracted back into the pela. This should give me a better idea of what's happening.

Just come back in after trying to suck the oil out of the 5 litre can with my pela, in the time that I was there (probably going on for an hour) I only managed to suck up about 3/4 of a litre. It seems to be creating a good vacuum because when I pull the pipe out of the oil you can hear it gurggling. Perhaps the pump is faulty, I cant think of anything else to try as its such a simple procedure!
Mike.

Have PM'd you Mike - sorry, did that before I read this. To summarise, there has to be something wrong - Pelas empty the sump in 20 mins or so. Maybe sludge in the sump - I've not heard of it before though, but you will be able to tell by looking at the end of the probe. Other thought - has someone put 100W oil in it -

Do they come with different diameter tubes for different engines??

If so is the one Mike(L) is using too narrow?

Thanks for your thoughts on this, just wondering how long do you run your engines before you start sucking the oil out. I ran mine for about 10 minutes, is that enough?
Mike.

Plenty enough Mike

Hi ,did you remember to take off the oil filer cap? otherwise you just form a vacume, mine works in about 20mins,
Cheers Nibs

Yes 20 - 30 mins here also. I tend to increase the suction by adding more pumps about halfway through the cycle. Try pumping water which obviously has a lot thinner viscosity. If that takes a long time then you either have a blockage in the pipe or quickly losing suction from somewhere.

Thanks for your replys, I decided this morning to give the pump another go, firstly using water, (like veg_ian suggests it should be able to do that!) it drained this with no problem (about 3 litres in 5 minutes roughly, perhaps even less time!) So then decided to give the oil from the bongo in the 5 litre can a go, again this seemed slow, decided then to try some new oil I had in the shed (15/40) again seemed slow. So then decided to take a spin back to the marine shop for some advice, the owner is a really nice guy and was happy to refund me, but we tested the pump and all seems fine with it, it creates a really good vacuum which is basically all it needs to do. We came to the conclusion that it must be down to the viscosity of the oil and that perhaps I needed to get the oil warmer than I did before starting the extraction. I'm going to give it another go but this time I will get the engine up to running temp before starting. Any comments are greatly appreiciated,
Mike.

I used to have a small hand operated pump that would take AGES to empty a few litres, MUCH worse if the oil was cold or semi-cold.

Last time I changed my oil, it was immediately after the engine was at full operating temperature. It took less than 10 minutes to extract 6 litres

Warm your oil up properly!

Dave

Perhaps it may have been better to drain the oil half an hour after shutting the engine down after a run mike? You'd be suprised at how "pi55y" the oil is when still hot/warm after a run, as opposed to waiting for the oil to heat up,from cold, on tickover... I reckon the hot 10/40 semi synth isn't dissimilar in viscosity than straight water?

probably going to sound like a stupid question by why use a pump,is it to avoid going underneath or is it to avoid a mess ?

A bit of both really...plus, a little more dirty old oil can be extracted via the pump,instead of relying merely on gravity to do the job...