Holy Crap! Check out my Injectors...

[Anetsberger]

I was under the hood changing all of my coolant lines today because they are old and cracky. My cousin pulled up in his bimmer and decided to check out what I was doing. He looked at my injectors and was concerned about the exterior rust. We decided to take a look at them and this is what we found. Luckily, he had replaced all of his injectors about a year ago and still had his old ones which were in perfect order. Oddly they are from a '92 325is and seems to work fine in my M42.

[Anetsberger]

Ahh, the new injectors.

[PoloJag]

Man, thats pretty bad.

[CABimmer]

you should have run some techron then pulled them again to see what kind of job it did.

[DSK M3/4]

pull the new ones in a couple of months and see what they look like. the insides of engines are not clean.

how many miles do you have?

[ma2lin]

Yikes! Do they really go that bad? How many miles do you have?
I've never seen injectors like that. Good thing your cousin pointed them out.

[Anetsberger]

I just hit 144k. The engine runs very strong and I was also very supprised to see the injectors in such poor condition. I'll inspect them again when I replace the intake gasket in a few months. (I re-used the gasket- I know, big no-no.)

Maybe they are so fouled because the previous owner never used premium fuel.

The Check Engine light comes on speratically now though. Probably because the green tops are letting in more fuel and messing up the a/f ratio. I just hope it isn't lean. It stays cool and doesn't ping, I guess everything is cool. I might get a meter, but I'm not to sure of their accuracy, and I'm broke. haha

Tom

[C.Yang]

i was having probs with my stock plugs running rich. black sediment when they were pulled out. i'll have to see if the ngk's fixed it in a few 10k miles

[Matthew C Smith]

interesting, thanks for the pictures.

Those things look pretty bad from the outside, but the spray port doesn't look so bad. I'd be curious to see some fuel coming out of them just to see the spray pattern.

[nightshocker]

Should I be worried? I have a 92 325is with 146k+ Should I take the time and look at my injectors this winter? Also what else should I look at with a car with this many miles?

Suspention is getting to be a problem but thats normal.
Recently replaced:

Wheel Hub
Ball Jount
Rear Wheel Bearing

Still needs to be replaced:
Tie Rods =( need to get more money for these.

But other than this what should I look into as far as engine wise?

[Sean@ECIS]

Nightshocker,

I'd replace em if I were you...

[jww///95]

Originally posted by Anetsberger
...The Check Engine light comes on speratically now though. Probably because the green tops are letting in more fuel and messing up the a/f ratio. I just hope it isn't lean. It stays cool and doesn't ping, I guess everything is cool. I might get a meter, but I'm not to sure of their accuracy, and I'm broke. haha...


Right now you are running a non-stock (flow rate) set of injectors. You are correct, the color of the injector designates its flow in terms of lbs per hour. You would probably have to hunt around bosch's site to figure out what the colors mean, because I have no idea what the green and yellow are. I know the orange, red, and blue, but i'm not familiar with those.

And yes, that is either created a rich condition that is causing the computer to cut back on fuel, or vice versa, both of which are inefficient ways of metering since the correction is coming after the fact. If I were you I would send your stock injectors out to a company like RC Engineering that will bench test and clean them for 15 - 20 bux each, then reinstall. Just use the green tops in the meantime until you get the correct yellow ones back

[Sean@ECIS]

Anetsberger,

I wasn't going to get into this, but jww///95 is right about your injector situation...this is not something you want to skrimp on. Spend the money and get the right injectors (new or cleaned). The fuel system is vital to your engine's perfrormance and longevity.

[Def]

If you can't afford to have those professionally cleaned, just soak them in some Xylene(can get it at Home Depot). This is a common ingredient found in fuel injector cleaner, and is a pretty strong solvent.

The build-up is not around the actual exit, so I wonder how "bad" they were actually flowing. Gasoline is some nasty stuff, and when you're burning it, stuff is bound to get pretty disguisting - so that explains the other areas.

BTW, you might want to try to clean out your intake manifold with some carb cleaner. Sure there is crap in there.

[bungy42]

Definitely send them to RC Engineering. It costs $24 per injector, and they'll have your old ones back to you overnight (same day turnaround). So if you overnight the injectors to them on Tuesday, you can have them back in the car on Thursday.

[Erik@EDGE]

damn..get those things cleaned and back in the car pronto!!