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  View original topic: T3 fuel injectors
donovjim Tue Aug 05, 2014 11:45 am

Anyone know where or even 'if" i can access new fuel injectors for my 1970 T3? (perhaps used my only option? even then what about sourcing...)

supersuk Tue Aug 05, 2014 12:24 pm

classified has plenty. You can always get them cleaned and checked out for about $100. I usually use witchhunters.

http://www.witchhunter.com/

Donnie strickland Tue Aug 05, 2014 1:15 pm

Yes, they're easy to find, new or remanufactured. The Bosch D-Jetronic injection system was used on many cars, so the injectors are common.

How do you know you need new ones?

nassau66427 Tue Aug 05, 2014 1:30 pm

supersuk wrote: classified has plenty. You can always get them cleaned and checked out for about $100. I usually use witchhunters.

http://www.witchhunter.com/

I sent my injectors to Witchhunter and they sure looked pretty when I got them back.

Imagine my disappointment when one of them leaked like a sieve between the plastic upper piece and the metal body. One would think they'd have caught that and said something.

I ended up snagging some from a junkyard and finding one that worked.

donovjim Tue Aug 05, 2014 2:00 pm

i don't know for sure if i need new but am concerned about adequate access if i do. they are out and look very bad... being cleaned up now. i dont want to but if i have to send them away i will.
thanks for the info... ant thing else you can add is always apreciated. thx J

supersuk Tue Aug 05, 2014 2:15 pm

Quote: I sent my injectors to Witchhunter and they sure looked pretty when I got them back.

Imagine my disappointment when one of them leaked like a sieve between the plastic upper piece and the metal body. One would think they'd have caught that and said something.

I ended up snagging some from a junkyard and finding one that worked.

Wow!! Thats a first. I've been sending my injectors to WitchHunter for years and all they've done for me is outstanding work.

Everyone has a bad product every once in a while. Did you talk to them about getting it corrected? How did they handle this?

nassau66427 Tue Aug 05, 2014 2:57 pm

supersuk wrote:

Wow!! Thats a first. I've been sending my injectors to WitchHunter for years and all they've done for me is outstanding work.

Everyone has a bad product every once in a while. Did you talk to them about getting it corrected? How did they handle this?

No, I just shined it on.

What could they do? It was my injector that was screwed up (my car was inop when I got it and I had no clue as to the condition of the injectors).

All I could have expected from them was an email or phone call or note in the box saying, "Hey, one of your injectors is shot. We marked it for you."

Gary Tue Aug 05, 2014 3:37 pm

About 10 years ago, a friend's father (chief mechanic of a racing team) gave me the rundown on fuel injectors. I was rebuilding the engine in my 1997 Dodge and was amazed to find three of the injectors completely plugged with garbage in the inlet. I was *almost* going to spend $200+ to ship them to get refurbished and flow tested when he explained to me that I could spend $75 on an ultrasonic cleaner. He said just about all racing teams pull the injectors at the end of each season and run them through a sonic cleaning cycle as it's the best way to clean all gunk and junk from injectors. He also added that flow testing wasn't worth the expense. Another Samba member I know had a business with a large sonic cleaner and he had me send mine as (in his mind) it would be a fun project. The injectors looked brand new and functioned for over 100K miles before a tornado destroyed the truck.

The moral of the story is you may consider purchasing a cleaner that has a basin large enough to hold an injector. Mineral spirits or solvent are the perfect cleaning medium, and yes, the injector is completely submerged.

Tram Tue Aug 05, 2014 4:43 pm

Gary wrote: About 10 years ago, a friend's father (chief mechanic of a racing team) gave me the rundown on fuel injectors. I was rebuilding the engine in my 1997 Dodge and was amazed to find three of the injectors completely plugged with garbage in the inlet. I was *almost* going to spend $200+ to ship them to get refurbished and flow tested when he explained to me that I could spend $75 on an ultrasonic cleaner. He said just about all racing teams pull the injectors at the end of each season and run them through a sonic cleaning cycle as it's the best way to clean all gunk and junk from injectors. He also added that flow testing wasn't worth the expense. Another Samba member I know had a business with a large sonic cleaner and he had me send mine as (in his mind) it would be a fun project. The injectors looked brand new and functioned for over 100K miles before a tornado destroyed the truck.

The moral of the story is you may consider purchasing a cleaner that has a basin large enough to hold an injector. Mineral spirits or solvent are the perfect cleaning medium, and yes, the injector is completely submerged.

Damn... that blows!

supersuk Tue Aug 05, 2014 5:55 pm

nassau66427 wrote: supersuk wrote:

Wow!! Thats a first. I've been sending my injectors to WitchHunter for years and all they've done for me is outstanding work.

Everyone has a bad product every once in a while. Did you talk to them about getting it corrected? How did they handle this?

No, I just shined it on.

What could they do? It was my injector that was screwed up (my car was inop when I got it and I had no clue as to the condition of the injectors).

All I could have expected from them was an email or phone call or note in the box saying, "Hey, one of your injectors is shot. We marked it for you."

I see, I had thought they messed up your injector.

raygreenwood Tue Aug 05, 2014 6:36 pm

Gary wrote: About 10 years ago, a friend's father (chief mechanic of a racing team) gave me the rundown on fuel injectors. I was rebuilding the engine in my 1997 Dodge and was amazed to find three of the injectors completely plugged with garbage in the inlet. I was *almost* going to spend $200+ to ship them to get refurbished and flow tested when he explained to me that I could spend $75 on an ultrasonic cleaner. He said just about all racing teams pull the injectors at the end of each season and run them through a sonic cleaning cycle as it's the best way to clean all gunk and junk from injectors. He also added that flow testing wasn't worth the expense. Another Samba member I know had a business with a large sonic cleaner and he had me send mine as (in his mind) it would be a fun project. The injectors looked brand new and functioned for over 100K miles before a tornado destroyed the truck.

The moral of the story is you may consider purchasing a cleaner that has a basin large enough to hold an injector. Mineral spirits or solvent are the perfect cleaning medium, and yes, the injector is completely submerged.


Um....no...thats not what you are paying for at an injector service house....and yes flow testing is absolutely necessary.
Yes....plenty of race teams simply dip the, ends in an ultrasonic tester for an hour or two and they will be squeeky clean with no flow.....largely because a race team has perfect fuel, no water in it, and no alcohol and less miles in a season than most put on their cars in the southwest in about 2 weeks.

Do you know what is happening during flow testing?
First they clean the injector ultrasonically....with pressurized cleaning solvent running through it....at various pulse widths . That is key to actually getting a varnished injector clean.
The flow testing is to check if the injector is flowing as designed at each key pulsewidth range from slow to wide open. Its very common for a perfectly clean injector to not be able to flow at design numbers at a specific pulsewidth and pressure range.
This is testing whether the solenoid is actually capable of translating injector pulse to create the proper opening speed and lift time.
A worn out injector may look perfect and be squeeky clean and leak free...and not be capable of giving the proper fuel per pulsewidth because of a weak return spring or weak windings in the solenoid.
That is what flow testing is really checking for.

I have spoken to a couple of people over the past 8 years who decided to spring for one of the cheap chinese or korean made machines that were the rage on the net about 7 years ago when the business starting booming.
They thought thiw would be an easy killing side business....just hook an inje tor up and turn on the pimp and walk away. Uh....no...yes....its easy work with a good machine but you actilually need to know what you are doing and know something about injector construction to be good at it. There are also electrical load tests to make sure the inector core is not on its last legs.
Ray

vlad01 Tue Aug 05, 2014 6:55 pm

Gary wrote: About 10 years ago, a friend's father (chief mechanic of a racing team) gave me the rundown on fuel injectors. I was rebuilding the engine in my 1997 Dodge and was amazed to find three of the injectors completely plugged with garbage in the inlet. I was *almost* going to spend $200+ to ship them to get refurbished and flow tested when he explained to me that I could spend $75 on an ultrasonic cleaner. He said just about all racing teams pull the injectors at the end of each season and run them through a sonic cleaning cycle as it's the best way to clean all gunk and junk from injectors. He also added that flow testing wasn't worth the expense. Another Samba member I know had a business with a large sonic cleaner and he had me send mine as (in his mind) it would be a fun project. The injectors looked brand new and functioned for over 100K miles before a tornado destroyed the truck.

The moral of the story is you may consider purchasing a cleaner that has a basin large enough to hold an injector. Mineral spirits or solvent are the perfect cleaning medium, and yes, the injector is completely submerged.

lol

yes! when I got a set of injectors cleaned this way from a "professional" it trashed 3 of them and the leaked profusely and were fine before "servicing".

I have a guy now which I use that does comprehensive cleaning, flow testing at different PW and voltages, He generates the linearity data, flow rate and dead times from 4V to 16V. coil resistance etc...

this kind of data is priceless and took years to find someone that could do that kind of service.

without this sort of info and service, just cleaning them is useless and sure way of wasting time and money.

Gary Wed Aug 06, 2014 5:42 am

If someone is absolutely anal about knowing the flow rate and other data of his injector(s) then that's fine; otherwise, an ultrasonic cleaner for the hobbyist/budget mechanic is an acceptable means of maintenance. Not all professional services are alike, and the person who serviced the injectors for my vehicle was a goldsmith.

It worked, I was happy, and 100+K miles of trouble-free service was well worth the price, which was the cost of shipping.

To each his own.

vlad01 Wed Aug 06, 2014 6:43 am

without the injector data I can't tune, it was as simple as that. going in blind, chasing my tail so to speak.

But flow rate is important in normal injector servicing as you can be running lean or rich in 1 or more cylinders without knowing if you don't have them tested( unless you have individual wide bands in each exhaust runner)

Thats why good services test and flow match a set for you so that each cylinder has the correct AFR and consistency.

Its like cleaning a pair of carbs and never adjusting or syncing them and saying "that will do, they are clean so syncing isn't required" makes no sense.

VWCOOL Wed Aug 06, 2014 5:17 pm

the injectors' flow-rate checking (and matching) during servicing/cleaning is as important as carb jetting!

JSMskater Sat Aug 09, 2014 12:51 pm

I'll just throw in, I've used witchhunter in the past and had great results - but I always test them with pressure to check for leaks before firing - anything can happen.



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