THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE - DFO gets a truck and hops on Schneider's IC Choice Program

Caught a break in the rain and finished getting the service done. All that is left tomorrow is just to button everything back up by putting the covers on and check the oil again in the morning.

Oil and oil filter are relatively easy and not that messy. Fuel filter gets messy, but hey when is replacing a fuel filter ever an easy job. The inline filter sits behind the engine inside the box on units of my era, on the new units they have a plastic filter that sits right where the fuel lines run into the fuel tank. It's a bit of a tight spot but its not too bad. Easier if you pop the cap off the air filter canister and remove the air filter then there is a little more room to work. You have to move two fittings over to the new inline filter from the old one.

After that is the tricky part. Due to the weird angle you put the fuel filter in, its kind of hard to have it filled with fuel. Not to mention all the diesel I had I put in my tractor a while back, so filling the filter manually wasn't an option. So, I checked the service manual and this is the process to bleed air up to the fuel filter and fill the fuel filter itself:

Don't tighten the fuel filter all the way, leave a little gap for air and fuel bubbles to escape.
Find the control box
Remove the starter fuse
Set the tripac to AC mode and drop the temp all the way down
It tries to start, of course the starter won't crank, but it goes through the process and kicks the fuel pump on
Fuel fills up in the filter and then bubbles out the top
Eventually HMI panel throws a no-start ENG code
Tighten fuel filter
Reinstall starter fuse
Reset ENG code
Repeat AC settings to start unit again

It took about 15 seconds of cranking and then it sputtered to life and runs great. If it failed to start again I'd probably bleed fuel at the banjo bolt on the return line on top of the injector pump, and failing that would crack the injector lines themselves and let it crank till all the air got out. But, since most of the fuel stays in the pump and injectors when just replacing the fuel filter that isn't really needed.

That was the trickiest part, manily digging around in my side box and moving crap out of the way to get the starter fuse removed.

Pretty easy job overall. Will definitely do it again myself, and I have a feeling with summer here that 1000 hours will go by quick!