Injector life, who has the most miles on a set before they started to degrade?
 

What's the most miles anyone has driven on a set of injectors before they where no longer in peak performance and where starting to degrade?

Just curious.

Pete.

Both of mine still run on stock injectors, seem fine so far... I'm going to have them balanced here at some point.

What do they do when they balance them?

You know I've read they need to be replaced around 150k? I bought into that. Mine weren't worn out. I'm glad I replaced them, but pull them and look at the nozzle faces to see if they have circular heat shield wear marks/concave surfaces and pay special attention to the pintle points. That should give you a better idea of overall injector condition. I'm glad I replaced them, but I didn't really need to.

I'm using the best 5 out of 10 that I have that pop about the same. So they have about 257K and 309K on them.

i have replaced
 

about 10 or 12 but they never seemed to make any difference in the way the car ran. i am thinking that at 250k they usually are still good.

tom w

Mine were replaced by a P/O at about 100k and I removed and cleaned them about two weeks ago. They looked fine internally except for some yellow crusty stuff that ozzed (don't know how crust ozzes but it did) out when I opened one. There was some kind of deposit around all of the nozzles that I had to scrape off with a razor. Put them back together and popped them back in and it ran great.

Pete,
All I can tell you is that the diesels I have owned, which are listed below ran on their original factory installed injectors until the day I sold them to someone else. One had 251K, the 84 had 312K and the K1500 TD Blazer had 373K.
The mileage was all highway which is the easiest on the engines. You get the best cooling, lubrication and most complete combustion at constant highway speed. Stop and go driving does shorten the lifespan of injectors and other components. Heat buildup and carbon deposits are the biggest culprits....

I would pull them and have them tested about every 100K. My experience has been that VW's and the GM diesel I have need new injectors every 100K. The MB I had checked at @155K and they were still okay. Before anyone jumps on how superior the MB injectors must be I will tell you the injectors in the VW and the GM are made by Bosch and the VW injectors look just like the MB's. RT

Pete,

I have the original injectors in the Mercedes, and they have 302,000 miles on them now. For the last 10,000 miles or so, I've noticed a slightly uneven idle and more smoke, along with a slight drop in mpg. I'm hoping that this is due to worn injectors... On the Volvo diesel, I replaced the injectors at around 315,000 miles with a set I took out of an 89,000 mile engine where the owner had neglected to change the timing belt and ended up destroying the engine (timing belts + aluminum heads = why you see way more M-B diesels still around than you do Volvo diesels!). The car runs no differently, but continues to be MUCH quieter upon start-up.

I'm curious as to what "balancing the injectors" means as well...

Take care.

Original injectors, good power, MPG and no smoke. What is the first sign to look for?

Balancing injectors means setting their pop pressures to within a certain tolerance, usually 5 bar. Injector life depends a great deal on the fuel quality and type of driving. Fuel contaminated with water can corrode the nozzles over time and low cetane fuel, e.g. US diesel fuel, tends to coke injectors and put more thermal stress on them. Stop-and-go driving, especially lugging the engine a lot, also tends to coke injectors. Highway driving and the occasional italian tune up helps.

It's a good idea to test the injectors every now and then, but if your engine doesn't smoke and shake and doesn't make any weird noises, your injectors are most likely fine.

and if
 

it ain't broke.....

tom w

356,000+ and still going strong on the 606. I Checked the spray patterns when I did the valves about 20,000 miles ago, they were just fine...