Six Hours

I don't know what's the matter with me.

I have changed Eolian's oil twenty times now.  Each time I have run the engine prior to the task... to warm up the stiff oil (down there in the bilge, the temperature could be near the water temperature, 48° right now).

But not this time.  See, I was going to change the oil filter with this oil change, and I decided not to run the engine before that.  Eolian's Perkins 4-236 has a horizontally mounted oil filter, and with a long period between engine runs, it partially drains back thru the oil passages.  I didn't want to have to deal with a full oil filter when removing it.

So I decided to pump out the oil with our vacuum can, without an engine run, when it was cold.

Wow, was that a bad decision.

It took six hours of pumping on the vacuum can to get the 8 quarts of oil out.  Yes, the oil filter change-out wasn't as messy...  but it was so not worth it.

Oh, and I have a vacuum leak in the can somewhere.  It wasn't enough to pull a vacuum and renew it when it was filled with oil.  No, I had to pretty much keep pumping, for six hours straight.

I'm so exhausted that I can barely lift this bottle of beer to my lips.

Six Hours