Thanks Simon. Nothing new in it however, just a different grease
pump with a larger capacity...
I gave it a whirl this morning after a visit to Enzed. Thirty minutes later, I left with more than a few adaptors to make my own Frankenstein's Monster. There was a hitch in that the thread which connects the hose to the
pump head is a very coarse thread which was unable to be identified by the local enzed crew off hand. So I was left with no alternative other than to attach the gauge and bleed valve to the back of the shrader valve chuck. Not a bad solution, although I do need to be careful stowing the head.
The routine I used is to screw the attach the unit to the car with the chuck valve shut off initially, bleed
hydro pump by pumping fluid through to the bleed off valve and into a spare plastic bottle, and then back flush the chuck by bleeding the pressure out of the car. The tank holds about 19 litres in all, I had enough glycol to make 10 litres of new fluid using a 50:50 mix. I might pick up proper Lockheed fluid now that I've proven it works. I'm not sure what the alcohol in the genuine fluid brings to the party, but BMC added it for a reason I suppose.
After pumping the car up and dumping pressure a few times to clear the lines out of old fluid, and remove the air which gathers at the high points, I pumped the system up to 350 PSI, and then allowed the unit to bleed back slowly to 290. The
pump made the pressure and volume up very easily, it took maybe two or three dozen strokes to do so. The fluid will bleed slowly back to the tank at a rate of about 20 PSI every 30 seconds, so this was useful in getting the height correct (edit: After having a good look at the included ball valve I noticed the fluid was leaking past this because it needed a bit of adjustment to get sealing, once this was done the pressure holds as you would expect it to). I pumped it past the correct level and allowed it to settle back to where I wanted it to be.
I realise the
pump is nothing more than a repackaging of the common grease gun design, but the huge capacity, the removal of the leaks inherrant in a grease gun,
ready-to-go nature and ease of use makes it a pretty useful unit.
Hydro checks and repairs at my house will now be easier than an oil change. All up cost to me was a little under 170 dollars.
I hope its useful to someone desiring a slightly heavier duty version of a simple useable design. If what I have done can be improved on, then let me know.