- Joined
- Mar 3, 2017
- Messages
- 804
You can probe through the fill holes with a thin tube (probaby not a soda straw, but something
stiffer, like nylon or teflon) while pumping. Raising oil (specific gravity lower than water) by a foot or
so doesn't require much vacuum, so lots of pumps would work: a chem lab aspirator (runs off water
flow), or a mity-vac, or a surplus copy machine pump, would suffice.
Maybe even a vacuum cleaner (but they don't cool properly with high vacuum and low airflow).
The oil oughtn't hit the pump, though, just take air out of a glass bottle, through hole #1 of a two-hole cork,
and let the oil come in hole #2.
Vinyl tubing (Tygon or similar) with a thick wall is good for vacuum or oil; most auto parts stores
have something suitable in stock.
Inexpensive bicycle pumps use a one-way valve in the stem: fit a reversed valve (and reverse the
leather-cup seal in the piston), and they do a dandy job of pumping a vacuum. I've modified
one of mine by soldering a Schraeder valve body (from an old inner tube) where the floppy stem tube went.
Then, put the floppy stem tube onto the Schraeder fitting, and... vacuum!