legacycentral bbs

1990 Legacy LS Wagon, Automatic, EJ22

Not a car expert - didn't see an answer on the forum search. Apparently I just lost fuel injector #2 and my engine is now a bumpy ride. Happened on a highway a few minutes ago, spent another 5-8 minutes on the road with it before arriving home. Would like to know how much I can get away with driving it this way, and if there is a moderately easy fix.

Thanks a lot!

I wouldn't drive it like that, but if its actually not squirting fuel then its not causing terrible damage. Pull the injector plug to make sure. Again, still should not drive it. The injectors are pretty easy to access in these cars. I did all 4 of mine a month ago in 35 minutes, although I know what I was doing and had the right tools to make it easy. Getting them out is kind of a pain.

The 90-91 injectors are different then the 92-94 so watch out if your pulling them from a junk yard. 90-91 auto injectors should be grey, I have heard they are also interchangeable with the 90-91 5 speed injectors which are black. 92-94 injectors are red. I got all four for like $80 on Rockauto.com.

My friend retrofit the 92-94 red injectors and rails onto a 1990 AT car, and it runs fine. The early injectors are failure prone.

I read if you use the newer injectors you need the later ecu for the car to run at its best. That also means you need the later MAF as well.

The 90-91 Legacies are so plentyful around here in the NW, I'm not sure what area you're from, but any junk yard should have a Legacy unless you're in the sticks somewhere. Grab a couple of injectors and clean em up and replace it. It would be mad cheap from a yard as well. I wouldn't bother finding new ones.

since she isn't a car expert, I think that her best route would be to just put the correct injector in and not go all swap happy like so many of us are on this site

TurnNburn wrote:since she isn't a car expert, I think that her best route would be to just put the correct injector in and not go all swap happy like so many of us are on this site

Hahahahaha this is so accurate.

My friend's sister's car is the 90 I was talking about earlier. They bought it, few months later an injector sticks wide open. He went to the junkyard, found a matching injector and put it in. Couple weeks later, a different injector sticks open. He buys another junkyard one. All fine for a few months. Yet another injector stops working and sticks closed. He was really tired of swapping injectors around, so I told him he could give a set of red's from a 95 EJ22 I had sitting around a try. He took the loaded rails and put them on the 90. No ECU swap, no MAF swap. It runs great and gets the same mileage it did before, but runs much smoother. His sister is happy, and since then he has had no more injector failures.

Given that experience and the great results, I would hardly characterize it as "going swap happy"

The clarifications I'd make are this....the red 92-94 and even later ej22 injectors swap much easier if you have a 90-91 AT Legacy with gray injectors.

When I swapped in the red injectors with appropriate rails into my 90 I found that the car ran a bit rich. When I swapped in the 92 ECU the mileage was better and car was a little bit peppier. Most "non-car people" probably would have not noticed the difference since it was slight.

That makes sense, the car we did it on with no issues was a '90 AT with gray injectors.

When I had red injectors on my 90 5 speed before I swapped over the right ecu, the car would run and drive normally, maybe marginally better, but would stall and die on start up if you didn't give it like half throttle for 15 or so seconds. And hot or cold would always idle super rich