Injector work & more

[Legacy777]

I was going to do my axles this weekend, but I got home friday and didn't have a socket big enough, so I went to plan B which was swap the balanced & blue printed injectors I bought almost a year ago from a buddy. They are from a 92-94 legacy. The 90-91 autos used a pintle type injector. The 90-91 manuals use a ball nozzle injector.

The 92-94's used a normal one I guess (don't know the exact name...they may also be ball nozzle, not sure). Well the fuel rails are different between the injectors. So the whole rails need to be swapped as well. I tried to do this on the car....and it was a mess, fuel going everywhere. So this time I pulled the whole intake manifold. Which I might add, I've been meaning to replace the intake manifold gaskets as well. After getting it off, the old gaskets are crap....thin, thin metal. I believe most of the oil that was accumulating around the runners' base was seeping through the gasket from the intake manifold. So I swapped everything cleaned up as much of the oil mess as I could.

I was quite surprised at how clean everything was in the ports & valves, no carbon build, no nothing. I don't know if it was because I ran seafoam the weekend before or not. But either way things looked good.

I finished everything up today, and car idles rock solid. It doesn't seem to knock when I floor it from a dead stop in neutral. I think that is due to intake manifold gasket issues before. Car does seem to run smoother....haven't noticed any real power gains, but I'm hoping the ECU will do some learning to improve things. It usually needs some good highway running to do this. Also, I'm hoping my mileage goes up.....it's been utter crap.....especially for a n/a motor.

Here's pics.

http://www.main.experiencetherave.com:8 ... injectors/


Take home messages:

If you got over 100k miles, replace the crappy stock intake manifold gaskets....they are probably leaking, and you can probably just loosen the intake manifold bolts lift it up slightly, pull old gaskets out, and put new ones in. Only thing you should watch for is to not let dirt get in the ports. here's pics:
http://www.main.experiencetherave.com:8 ... P_2524.JPG
http://www.main.experiencetherave.com:8 ... P_2525.JPG

Seafoam rocks.....I was very amazed at how clean the valves and everything was. I don't think I can contribute it solely to my lead foot....(probably doesn't hurt) but these things had pretty much zero build up on them.
http://www.main.experiencetherave.com:8 ... P_2511.JPG
http://www.main.experiencetherave.com:8 ... P_2513.JPG

92-94 injectors can be swapped on 90-91 legacy as long as you get the appropriate fuel rails. My concern at the time was that the 92-94 injectors don't stick out of the intake manifold like the pintle ones did. The 92-94 legacies had a change in the intake manifold between aug & sept of 92. So I don't know if the new manifold allows the injectors to sit closer the port or if it were some superficial change. I could probably see if the newer manifold superceeds the old one....if so, there's probably no difference or issues with running the newer injectors on the older manifold.

All this work is much easier to do with the manifold off, and to be quite honest, it wasn't that hard. I worked on it about 4-5 hours last night, and maybe another 4 or so today. Granted I was cleaning too.....I can't put stuff back together dirty

[vrg3]

Cool... Just one quick point:

If you got over 100k miles, replace the crappy stock intake manifold gaskets....they are probably leaking, and you can probably just loosen the intake manifold bolts lift it up slightly, pull old gaskets out, and put new ones in.

You're supposed to scrape all of the old gasket material off both mating surfaces with a razor blade. You need to stuff the ports with rags to make sure none of the scraped-off material gets into the engine, so it's really hard to do without actually removing the manifold.

You can check if your gaskets are leaking with starting fluid.

[Legacy777]

the gaskets are metal.....so there's no residue, no old gasket material.

The starting fluid method didn't work for me, I don't think it was a big leak for me....but I do think there was some seapage (sp)

[entirelyturbo]

Wow! Congrats Josh! I honestly would be worried about doing the whole thing in time for work on Monday... But you pulled it off in a day! Of course, your tools are organized and in their proper places, unlike me, who probably spends more time looking for tools than actually working

Now, these "balanced and blueprinted" injectors, do they basically solve the problems that fuel injection systems sometimes have of not delivering the same amount of fuel evenly to all 4 cylinders? And I presume that the injectors themselves are heavier-duty than stock, etc. etc.

I would do an ECU reset after something like that, just so it starts gathering data right away from the new components... But do we still have the same old hesitation problem that you were possibly hoping to rid yourself of with this job?

Also, are you saying that OEM gaskets, even new, are too thin, and that one should look aftermarket for thicker ones?

And finally, I think the axle nuts are 32mm for future reference...

[vrg3]

Balanced and blueprinted injectors won't eliminate the problem, since the fuel delivery system puts all the cylinders in series, but it eliminates one source of discrepancy.

The OEM gaskets have been updated. The new ones are made of some kind of organic/semimetallic stuff.

When I changed my intake manifold gaskets the original gaskets were metal but there was still a bunch of material on the mating surfaces (especially the head) that I had to scrape off. But maybe a previous owner did something dumb or something. I had a big leak before replacing them.

I wonder if it would be easier to do on the car if you relieved fuel pressure and then let the car sit overnight to let the fuel in the lines evaporate. I might be doing my injectors soon and I'd rather not have to pull the manifold again.

[legacy92ej22t]

If you got over 100k miles, replace the crappy stock intake manifold gaskets....they are probably leaking, and you can probably just loosen the intake manifold bolts lift it up slightly, pull old gaskets out, and put new ones in. Only thing you should watch for is to not let dirt get in the ports.

I wonder if this could be my problem. I have a little bit of an idle issue. It idles really good under a slight load (when AC/DEF is on) but other wise it doesn't hold steady. It will idle good then drop lower for a second or two then go back to normal. I've also noticed lately that after WOT conditions if I stop (like at a light) the car almost wants to stall. The rpms go real low and the engine stumbles a little for a second or two then it goes back to normal idle again. If I'm running the AC/DEF it doesn't seem to do it. I did the starting fluid check as suggested by vrg3 and came up empty. Any thoughts?

[Legacy777]

The balanced & blue-printed injectors do help balance things out, however like vrg3 mentioned with the fuel system in series it won't be 100% balanced. I was thinking about converting to parallel fuel rails. Our manifolds are a little different then the newer ones, so the instructions on scoobymods isn't exactly all that's to it.

Rod G had his manifold converted to parallel by i-speed. I had been waiting for a month or more for them to return my phone calls/emails. I got fed up, and decided not to mess with it. On a n/a car I don't think it's that big an issue. On a turbo car I would've done it.

The b&b injectors are just new OEM injectors.

I haven't driven the car enough to see how it's affected the hesitation.

As vrg3 mentioned, the new gaskets are better.