How To Fix An Airless Sprayer That Is Not Priming.

This is Chris the Idaho Painter. In this video, we're going to go over an issue you may run into with your airless sprayers not priming. And I got a 440i eye right here that we've run into the issue with it. And we we run into this issue quite a few times with all of our sprayers. And and the sprayer will eventually not prime itself. And if it won't prime, it won't spray. And over time, you're going to get a a buildup of paint inside this hose, or you may suck up a piece of grass or a leaf or a little tiny rock or something that might get by your rock guard, and it's going to come up inside your lower fluid section, and it could get hung up. And there's a little tiny ball inside there, and it could get hung up in the ball. And and what we see quite a bit is paint breaking free from this hose that eventually settles in this hose over time. And it builds up. It'll eventually break free. it'll try to pass that ball and it'll get stuck in that ball and and then the the sprayer itself won't prime. It'll just sit there and and attempt to prime and no paint or very little paint will come out of your prime hose and it won't prime and won't get ready to paint. So, quick quick and simple fix. And to determine whether that's the problem is just removing this hose, looking up inside there at the lower ball. And on a 440i, it just has a retention spring. This retention, usually you can just grab them with two fingers, squeeze the spring, and it'll just come right off. This one's got a one side of the spring's broken, so I'm using a pair of needle-nose pliers to just squeeze that spring together and pull that spring down. on. And this little retention spring is what keeps this hose up inside the lower fluid section. Once you remove that spring, lower fluid section hose will come out. Look down inside this hose. A lot of times you'll see a big chunk of paint down inside this hose. If not, now you're going to look up inside this lower fluid section and you'll actually see a ball up inside there. And you'll typically I've actually seen blades of grass in between that ball not passing through there. I've seen little tiny sticks up inside there, but most commonly uh thin pieces of film breaking free from that hose. And then you just reach up inside there. I use just like a little tiny flathead screwdriver. Anything that will reach up inside there. Sometimes a five in one can grab it. Or you can just use a little pair of needlenose pliers. Reach up inside there. The needle-nose pliers is actually long enough to touch that ball and actually grab anything, keeping that ball from receating down and allowing paint to pass and not pass properly. And you'll just get that whatever's debris is in there that's causing your issue. Pull it out. You're going to stick your prime, you're going to stick your fluid hose back on and it should cure your problem. And I'll show you what that ball looks like here closely. We'll get a close-up view with our camera. So, we're looking inside our lower fluid section, and you can actually see that ball inside there. And that ball has got to be able to move up and down and be able to allow paint to go flow through or not flow through, whether it's priming or in the paint mode. Got to make sure there's nothing causing that ball to seat improperly. Now, just to replace our fluid hose, we're just going to stick our fluid hose back up inside there. We're just going to press it all the way up inside. And then got our springs in the way here. It's going to push up inside there and it'll go up inside just about an eighth of an inch. And you're going to see a ring inside there that your retention spring falls into. Going to squeeze that retention spring. Place that back inside there. With this retention spring broken, it's a little bit harder to reinstall, but got it in there. Need to order myself a new retention spring. That way, I don't have to use a pair of needlenose pliers to remove it. So, typically you can fix that problem with the sprayer not priming with no tools. Sometimes the piece of debris that's up inside there that won't pass through that ball is very small and sometimes just a little bit of a tap will get it to flow through. And this is where having a hammer could be a good solution to attempting to resolve that problem. You just don't want to use your hammer too hard. And what we do is the first thing we do is if that the sprayer is not priming properly, we're just going to tap on our fluid section with our hammer to see if that will resolve the problem without taking off our intake hose. And because when you got your sprayer loaded up with paint, taking off this hose, paint's going to come pouring out and it is a little bit messy. So, we always try to resolve our problem with a hammer first. You're just gonna, while the sprayer is running and in prime, you're just going to tap on your fluid section lightly, just like this. And that tap sometimes is just enough to get that piece to pass through. If these taps don't work, just about 10, 15 taps, then you're going to have to remove the lower fluid hose. And what you don't want to do is hit so hard that you're banging and messing up your fluid section if you hit too hard. So, it's just light taps with a hammer. We need something that's going to, you know, cause enough shock to go through there and possibly move that ball around, allow our piece of debris to pass through.