PH98I30

Anyone have a preference in where to get a good injector rebuild kit? I want O-rings, screens and pintle caps.
Thanx.

CS_AR

I've used the CS Performance kit a couple of times now. I see the price has come down to $25.88. I guess the low cost injectors from China has slowed sales on the DIY rebuild kits.

I paid $34 for the CSP kit in this link three years ago.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/201023508532

Mr Injector sells kits for $34. I'm sure this kit will be good.

http://www.mrinjectorparts.com/store..._Kits_002.html

I think I will order a couple more CS Performance kits since the price has dropped.

I have 9 injectors that I need to rebuild. I rebuilt three last month to make pictures for a 'how to" thread that I would like to finish over the weekend. The weather will be bad this weekend so I will be stuck indoors looking for something to do.

Do you have the injectors off the car?

The thread below is in construction. I need a couple of extra pictures to finish it. The thread is intended to be relevant to any 1994-1999 Nissan side feed injector equipped vehicle. I've refurbished 9 injectors using the techniques in the thread. I have 9 more to rebuild. That will put me at 26 Nissan injector replacements or rebuilds in the past six years.

https://maxima.org/forums/test-posts...ml#post9134028

Here's a picture of most recent set that I refurbished one Saturday afternoon to make pictures for the thread.

The Wizard

iTrader: (43)

Craig, how does your "spraying out the injector port" compare to injector cleaning services offered by professionals like Deatschwerks etc? To me, this is the most important part of the "rebuild" process.

How do you compare before and after with no bench test flow results?

CS_AR

It doesn't. I start with known working injectors that are in need of new o-rings, screens and pintle caps. It just replaces the rubber and plastic parts that are likely to fail. That's all it does. I'm not selling rebuilt injectors to anybody.

I also understand and have experienced injector coil failure. That comes with injectors that have reached end of service life. There is no amount of cleaning or testing that will bring back an old injector with a failed coil.

jholley

iTrader: (13)

What type of cleaner did you spray into the injector? Carb cleaner?

CS_AR

SeaFoam spray cleaner and lubricant. Nothing too harsh.

PH98I30

The injectors are still in the car. I am starting to have some starting problems with puffs of smoke coming out the tailpipe. The car does not burn oil. I have 156K on the clock with no engine work done on the car. I am waiting until I can use my aunts garage to work in. I have no room in mine, but she no longer drives and we are cleaning out her garage. I want to take my time as I do have my Rav 4 I can drive while working on the I30.

CS_AR

My first 4th gen injector adventure happened on a 99 model with approximately 165,000 miles. The leaking injectors problem had been happening for a while. So by me not understanding the symptoms associated with a couple of leaking injectors, it cost me a bundle to resolve. Looking back at everything that happened from the leaking injector ordeal, over $1,000 went down the drain on tow charges, incorrect professional diagnostic hours, ECU resets for a 99 model, and other stuff.

Strangely, I have a 99 model I30 with over 250,000 miles that has never shown any indication of an injector problem. Also, I have a 98 model that I purchased with close to 240,000 miles that did not exhibit any injector symptoms before I replaced the injectors. So I can't predict when injectors will fail based on mileage. All I can do it proactively plan for addressing a future problem that I see has become quite common over the past 3 years.

In my case, I make a lot of maintenance decisions based on the likelihood of a given part giving me trouble over the next 5 years of service. I do all of my preventive maintenance activities in phases (e.g. engine, suspension, appearance) within a relatively short window of time, to setup the vehicle for trouble free operation (well as much as I can humanly and financially accomplish) for a 5 year run cycle. I know at the end of 5 years, that wear and tear items will need to be replaced. It just happens.

So I try to make the next 5 year maintenance cycle easier to accomplish by making some improvements during the first cycle that have a payback in maintainability some 5 years later. I know that "I'll be back in 5 years" so the next time through the process it will be much easier than the first iteration. I make a few changes around the intake plenum during the process that allow me to pull and replace it with the least amount of time.

What works for me may not necessarily work for someone else.

When you get into removing your injectors there is one huge time saving trick that I learned from "The Wizard" and "Turbobink" that I've been using more recently. I learned about it just after I had replaced injectors on the 99 model using vice grips to loosen the screws. That trick is to make your own Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) driver. Those Phillips head looking screws that you see on the injector rail for the injectors, FPR, and TPS, are not Phillips screws at all. They are JIS screws.

After seeing a number of mangled JIS screws on injector rails over the years, and personally using vice-grips to remove the screws. I tried making my own JIS driver with a 1/2 drive #2 Phillips head socket in a set that I purchased from Harbor Freight.

That one tool and removing the injectors while the rail is still mounted, made the job go by much faster. Trust me, I've done my share of removing injectors with the rail out of the vehicle and with vice grips. So after using my homemade JIS driver, I won't go back to vice grips.

Here's a video about the difference between JIS and Phillips screws.


Here's a picture of filing the tip off of a #2 Phillips socket.



Here's how it fits the JIS screws.



Lean into the 1/2 drive to let your weight keep the driver tight against the screw as you break the screw loose. I can now break loose the JIS screws using this approach in a fraction of the time that it took when I was using vice-grips.



So many thanks "The Wizard" and "Turbobink" for sharing and reinforcing this trick.

maximaxi

Honestly, I'd just buy new injectors (Bosch, Hitachi, or Beck/Arnley). And if you need one of the rear injectors, replace all three. They don't come with the O-rings, so you'll need to buy a package separately, one for each injector. Beck/Arnley is a good brand.

max ride 41

iTrader: (4)

i did all 3 for 120.00 a month ago. replace that plenum gasket while you have it apart.

CS_AR

<Big Grin>

Maybe we should all spend a lot of money on our first set of injectors. I did and it felt great. It was $1,080 for a set eight of flow matched "black dot" Borg Warner Division 370cc purple tops like the one in the picture. Actually the nice people at Borg Warner donated a set to the club to use for evaluation purposes. So we sent the set to Deatschwerks in OKC for flow testing to see if the injectors were truly flow matched. They were. Afterward club members went out and bought sets at roughly $125 each.

Borg Warner Division flow matched injectors are good. Deatchwerks confirmed it. I've done business with Deatchwerks. The're good.

Today I try to resolve the pintle cap o-ring issue as cost effectively as possible. Owning a 4th gen has ruined me because I can now solve problems for pennies compared to the dollars I spent on "expensive is better" replacement items for a V8 Nissan.

Solving the injector problem at a low cost gives extra money to spend on items like a Warpspeed Y-pipe and suspension enhancements. Enhancements where I can feel a horsepower gain or improvement in handling. Those are purchases that give a real bang for the buck.

I'm not saying to neglect injectors that could leak and cause flooding problems or experience coil failures due to being at or end of service life. I've experienced both with OEM injectors and know how to avoid those issues. That's the easy stuff.

Recently I purchased some new injectors for $11 each. Since they didn't cost a lot of money, I thought they must be bad. For my own piece of mine, I sent them to a company in Florida for flow testing. To my surprise they all came back with PASS flow test results. All good. I took the test results and tried to make sure injectors with similar performance characteristics were on the same engine bank. These injectors are installed on a 4th gen that is rarely revved over 2,500 RPM. This is not a race car. It never will be. It is a nice dependable daily driver for a young person on a budget.

I'm sure there are a few people in the VQ30 world who go to the trouble to arrange injectors in the right bank or left bank based on a flow report. I do see a lot of people buying new and refurbished injectors, but not many who go to the trouble to place injectors based on flow performance. Do they even know the individual performance characteristics of the injectors they purchase?

Flow and bank placement seems to be more common with people who drive Z32s, VH45s or V engines that are NOT normally aspirated.

Just for fun. How much did the injectors cost that are running in the engine in this video?

MaxiNoob98

I have a question. Is it important to replace the spacer on the injector too? The CSP kit that I order does not come with them.

CS_AR

That's a good question. I have replaced them when old ones have become hard and brittle. Usually I reuse the old one.

On the flip side, a few years ago I bought a kit from Deatchwerks that came with new caps. Here's a picture of the cap. Those caps have open tops. I still have them on the bag. This tells me the cushion may not be necessary. I think I asked why the caps have open tops. If I recall correctly, the answer was like "drifters like open caps" instead of the closed ornamental OEM style. Ok.. Well cool..

Speaking of drifters, here's an interesting thread from the 240sx club on when things go wrong during an injector repair. You'll see some familiar looking pictures. The round looking pintle cap in the first picture is the type that I see being used on a Subaru.

On the last picture you can see that somebody didn't know to use a JIS driver on injector cap screws.

From the marks on the side of the screw, it looks like the poster used vice grips or pliers to break a screw loose and managed to break the cap.

The entire thread is interesting and somewhat sad because the poster did not know to use penetrating lubricant to loosen the injector before attempting to remove it.

Hopefully OUR club can reference the injector tips thread to avoid the mistakes issues posted in the following 240SX club thread.

http://www.240sxforums.com/forums/s1...-pics-too.html






I've found the trick for "easy injector removal" is to spray penetrating oil (e.g. WD40) on the top of the injector so it soaks down through the crack and lubricates the o-rings. I spray it until I see a sufficient amount has been absorbed into the o-ring area.



After the lube has soaked in, then I rotate the injector in the rail (usually 4 or 5 turns) until I can tell the lubricant has completely covered the o-rings.



On the final turn I align the injector plug body over one of the screw holes, then use a big screwdriver to work the injector out of the rail. If a sufficient amount of lube is covering the o-rings, and the injector can be rotated without much effort, it will pop right out when you remove it from the rail. If it doesn't easily pop out on the first try, just rotate it another turn and try again.



I used one of the old rails that I keep in my workshop as the "worst case" scenario for removing injectors. The rail was removed in 2010 from an old Nissan engine that had been sitting for several years. I guesstimate the rail has been sitting without fuel for at least 10 years. When I removed the injector, the entire pintle cap and o-ring stayed in the rail. The FSM suggests removing the rails and pushing the injectors out from the bottom for this reason.

Luckily, I've never had this situation happen with any of my VQ30 rails. But if I do, then I will need to pull the rail to safely remove a stuck pintle cap. I think having a pintle cap stick in the rail may be an "edge case" but I wanted to note that it can happen.





After removing the injector, then I remove the upper o-ring.



Usually some penetrating oil will soak past the o-ring and get into the space between the screen retainer ring and the injector body. If it doesn't then spray some penetrating oil around the screen top so it can be easily removed without having to cut it.

Over the years I've tried multiple ways of cutting screens away from the injector body. It was after I refurbished injector #8 when the "light came on" and I realized I had been making screen removal much harder than should be. So I just use a big straight edge screwdriver and place it between the screen retaining ring top and the bottom of the injector top and give it a twist. If small amount of lube has soaked between the screen and injector body, the screen should pop off.



I make a small cut on the pintle cap ring so I can easily remove it from the injector nozzle. That is trick that I picked up from a youbute injector video. I had been making pintle cap removal much harder than it needed by trying to force the cap off the nozzle end until I got to injector refurbish #7 and changed to this approach.



Here's the injector ready for cleaning. I've never found a bad spacer that needed to be replaced. I guess one can become brittle and crack over time, but I've been lucky in that regard. As far as spacers go, I really like the solid spacers used on Borg Warner Division injectors and the ones that Deatschwerks sells on their site. I have one car with the Borg Warner solid spacers and two with the slotted spacers like the one in the picture below. The purpose is to be a spacer between the o-ring and the pintle cap. That's all it does. It's all good.



I spray out any holes in the injector nozzle and injector body with a cleaner lubricant. Some people use carb or brake parts cleaner. I try to use a cleaner that has some lubrication protection that isn't too harsh. I like the lubrication protection because I bag the injectors after refurbishing them and put them on the shelf for years or I might use them that day. I know this does not for substitute having the injector professionally cleaned. It's a risk that I'm willing to take because I'm working with healthy injectors that I know and trust.

A lot has changed with injector pricing over the years and will continue to change as the market becomes more competitive. Six years ago, getting injectors professionally rebuilt was the most cost effective approach to get new screens, o-rings, pintle caps and a cleaning. Today I can buy a new injector (some are purported to be flow matched) for less than it costs to have one rebuilt. So a good experience with a DIY kit, and the general market drop in injector pricing, caused me to change my thoughts about the amount of money I spend to solve for the leaking o-ring problem.

I would not want to be in the injector service business these days unless I was plugged into a bulk pricing source from China where new injectors can be bought for $2 each (100 and over) or in (lots of 200+) at $1 each. I would offer a "value add" and to deliver flow matched injector reports at a $15 per injector price point. The cost of injector cleaning and testing equipment has dropped to the point where a hobbyist can now have their own machine and service injectors for their car club friends and family for cheap.

I see lots of online sellers marketing rebuilt injectors at in the $12 to $15 per price range. I believe those are are new injectors from China being re-marketed as rebuilt. If somebody gets one with a bad coil and it doesn't work, well it was supposed to have been rebuilt. No big deal, just send them another new one. I think we can expect injector prices to continue to fall over the next few years as old cars that use the side feed injectors disappear and supply continues to outpace demand.







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PH98I30

I was skulking around the boneyard yesterday just for fun and found a recently wrecked 98 Maxima with what looks like newly installed injectors. I am going to take out the front set and look at them. At $5 a piece, I might buy them if they look good inside just for spares.

CS_AR

That would be nice deal. It never hurts to have some spares.