I believe Ernie posted something about this a while back, but here is my stooge safety tip of the day, clean your injectors! As you can see from the report they were in need of service and you don't want the expense of cleaning and repairing your heads from the damage this can cause. Trust me on this... Image Unavailable, Please Login
what exactly did they do to clean them?? Any routine product offered by the company that cleaned yours to maintain them??
Some kind of (gasoline compatable) solvent and an ultrasonic bath while the injectors are beign fired and fluid running through them.
+1, absolutely a must do. I did mine at the last engine out (36k miles on the odo?) with the same company. I think it's something to do at every other engine out major...
Just started my engine out tonight on my new to me 355, I also want to do this. Thanks for the post! One of many things that I want to cover over the next few months of working.
I've got a question. Since there are tiny variations in the numbers post-cleaning.... is there an optimal place to put the injectors that inject a little more? Or, in other words, are there cylinders that run hotter (or some other parameter) that would benefit from a tiny bit more fuel?
Very Nice Jeff. Tell me you pulled them yourself. Glad you got yours cleaned out. From the numbers they looked like they were mucked up pretty good. Those of you wondering where I sent mine, to www.mrinjector.us He charges $16 each. Bill is a very nice guy, did a great job, and quick turn around.
+1! Nice work Jeff, certainly a must do at least once when the engine is out. Doing them EVERY major service is probably a bit much. They reccommend every 100,000 km. So the amount we drive these cars I suggest at least once or twice in your life time. Or even once every 10 yrs. I will do mine when I remove the engine, only because they have ever been cleaned. I have all the service history for my car and I dont recall ever seeing the injectors sent away to be cleaned. I will do it now and probably wont again for another 10-20 yrs. Well......... Excellent = excellent spray Good = good spray Fair = fair spray Dripping = dripping/no good. Looks like it was money well spent for Jeff. He will get better fuel economy, *slightly* more power and better emissions out the exhaust pipe now.
Just the tips are immearsed in methanol while pulsing the injectors in an ultrasonic bath. There are special solutions but methanol is what we use and I would bet that those special solutions are methanol based.
RC Engineering charges $24.00 per injector plus applicable taxes. They are right in town for me so no shipping charges, but I am sure there is someone local for you.
Very interesting! RC was the original bigdog written up in all the hotrod mags. They started getting hoity toity and started to charge beaucoup bucks and customer service went in the toilet. Then a few years back I found Mr. Injector and many of you and my SCCA friends started using them. Now RC is down to a resonable 24 bucks. I'm glad to see it. Now lets see if the customer service comes back too.
I'm glad to see they dropped their price. Last year when I called them they wanted to try and charge me something like $45 per injector. Suuuucrew that! Fatbooy told me about Mr.Injector and I'm VERY please with his service. And like Kaiv said, you get candy too.
Not so sure about RC these days when it comes to street car injectors. They still do a good job on race cars when you go for the full out spec'ing. Dirty injectors in the 355 is the "kiss of death"
Here is what a cleaning process can look like from one vendor: http://www.witchhunter.com/process2.php4
Hi Jeff, did you deal directly with Russ at RC? If so, did he happen to mention if the F355 injectors are common to another manufacturer/vehicle? It would be nice to know that new replacements could be purchased without the Ferrari tax.
The injectors for the 2.7 are different that the ones in the 5.2. Dave and I talked about this a couple of years ago on the phone and we both wondered why the change. Does anyone know why they are different and how would a 355 run if the injectors for a 2.7 were installed in a 5.2 and vise versa?
Nope...ain't none. The last time RC suggested a replacement the car ran terrible....ask Brian in SF, he knows first hand.
I've wondered the same thing and Dave and I talked at some length about the 355 injectors. These injectors are to my knowledge NL being produced and inventories are very low(depending on 2.7 or 5.2). I don't think the spray patterns are any different along with operating pressure's and nozzle lengths....may be something as subtle as the signal difference(or wiring interconnect) between the 2.7 ecu(1 per cyl. bank) and the single 5.2 ecu. Maybe Dave can chime in if he can break away from that breakfast burrito.
The burrito turned to shoe leather in the microwave.... the dogs even had a tough time with that one. Servicing injectors these days has no standardized method and varies as much as the cost. Assume nothing as what is done varies a great deal between sublet sources. I have used both of the companies being spoken of as well as a number of others not mentioned.... The final product is as different as night and day. Careful about being Penny Wise..... Bosch and injectors.... there isn't enough band width to tell the whole story here! I had many long conversations with Bosch Engineers regarding this subject and on the 355 specifically. When I told the engineers on the phone that all of the spec's were near the same there was instant laughter from all on the phone. "Where did you get 'these spec's' I was asked? 'The Net' of course... The laughter hit a new pitch, according to the engineers that data has never been released and what is on the Net is highly flawed! Due to my new relationship with Bosch at the time I had plans to stock a number of these injectors (the number remaining in the system were really quite low at the time) while I followed through on a plan to make a new injector of my design. One of the 355 numbers had never been put in the N American system and thus required I purchase the entire remaining stock in Europe to do so.... the numbers being spoken of made me weak in the knees. Having my new injector design already on paper, the purchase of Europe's stock of the 355 injectors would have terminated my plans to build my own design. One can find suppliers cheaper than Bosch but I have yet to find one where the quality is even in the same ballpark. I value that relationship I have with them a great deal! Having solved the Motronic control issues with the Gold Connector Kit I finally had a base platform that could accurately control mixtures again. That was the break through that allowed me to start playing with the fun stuff..... Performance related innovations, Longevity had to be the first issue resolved. A new injector design is but one of many new items we have been working on and I have yet to find a downside other than the money sucking black hole that goes with projects of this nature. To buy time until my new injector design went from paper to product and finished the Beta testing cycle....... I too have been having them serviced like everyone else but I look closely at the quality. Price is a secondary concern as I know all too well how critical the component really is in the whole chain. Getting caught up in the price shopping where no questions about quality are being asked..... some folks are in for a big surprise and rest assured, the Model/Marque will be blamed, not the choices made in how they were maintained. Use history as a teaching tool and look back about 15 yrs..... The Model/Marque has some problems but.... many were 'Caused' by short sighted decisions in how they were serviced.
