so I noticed a little leakage under the ford the other day and after inspection it appears to be coming from the water separator under the driver side down mounted on frame rail. We pulled the lever to drain the fuel/water but the flow just doesn't stop, fuel just keeps coming. We are wanting to take this thing off to further inspect, any ideas on how much fuel is supposed to come out? Or if truck needs to be positioned a certain way like up hill?? It's 2008 with the 6.4. We haven't "measured" the amount of fuel but suspect around a gallon has been drained out already...which seems a little excessive
Draining water separator on ford 6.4
- Thread starter 93redzj
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2005
- Location
- Stanley, NC
I saw conflicting things online when I was researching this a few months ago after my "drain water separator" message came on. Some said it's just a couple teaspoons worth, and others said it would run till it was "drained" which may take a few gallons. So I did it key off, and basically nothing came out. Then key on, fuel pump running, let it run maybe a minute, drained what was clearly just diesel, so I stopped it. Warning message self cleared, so I guess I did it long enough. As best I can tell, it's just a dumb system. The drain lever just opens a valve, and if the fuel pump isn't on, you're just releasing the residual pressure in the line. When the fuel pump is running, it will only cut off once a certain pressure is met, which can't be reached with the valve open. My assessment is that there is NO intelligent feature of the system that stops the flow once the water is drained. So draining a 12oz can worth of fuel out is more than enough to flush through the separator module and valve.
YotaOnRocks
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2007
- Location
- Madison
I just crack the one on my airdog open for a few seconds every couple thousand miles.
Thanks for responses guys, yeah we were having a hard time pin pointing exactly how much fuel is supposed to come out and such but we did determine that it's probably best to not have a little over half a tank of fuel and have the nose of the truck going slightly down hill....this seems to contribute to fuel continuing to drain. So we're gonna try again when I get to around 1/4 tank or a little less and have the nose of truck going more up hill and see if we can't drain the fuel bowl then to change the filter and such. It seems that I'm leaking fuel at the cap of the frame rail mounted filter
In all honestly, we drain them 10 times or so a week, you should only get around 2 cups of fuel max (what's in the separator). Typically the 6.0 and 6.4l wouldn't siphon but the 6.7l would. If you've already drained say 1/2 of cup I seriously doubt there's any water remaining.
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