Somebody please give me the 74 450SE injector seal 101 course!

I'm trying to figure out just exactly what seals I need to order for my fuel injectors. Seems all of the on-line places list the parts but no pictures that I can find.

I have installed the new fuel injector "holders" (finally found a pic of them!) and it seems that three other seals are listed. I see Upper, Lower: Green O-ring, and lower listed for a total of three different seals per injector. The engine I took my "new" injectors from only had two seals per injector, an Upper and a Green O-ring. Was this missing something and do I need to order three different seals or just the Upper and Green O-ring?

Got it running quite a bit better today, at least the idle is under control now. Seems the Aux Air Valve is stuck wide open so I have bypassed it for now - looks like another trip to the junkyard! I re-timed it now that I have it idling at about 900 RPM and the throttle response seems much better.

The main gripes left are a bad miss at idle, above about 2800 RPM it feels pretty smooth, and exhaust manifold leak. I tightened up the top manifold bolts and three lower nuts and the exhaust leak is almost gone. How in hell does one get at the lower front nut on the r/h side manifold!!??

OK, enough whining for one day...

Justin B.

[psfred]

Justin:

Give the Aux air valve a gentle but solid smack with the flat side of a hammer -- the piston is stuck and a sharp, "flat" blow will often jar it loose.

The seals should be either a rubber mushroom shaped one at the tip or the plastic seal with o-ring. The other, larger, seal is held onto the injector body by a snap ring, it's where the hold-down clamps it to the head.

Rough idle is almost certainly dead fuel or sticky injectors, both of which will be cured by running a while. Bad points will also cause this problem, but I thought you said you replaced them.

Fouled plugs aren't going to clear until you get it under load for a while.

The adjustment wheel on the ECU may not be stuck -- some of them have a locking screw (I wish mine did, it creeps). Big plastic phillips head in the center of the adjuster.

No cold start valve operation, when the valve acually works with applied current, is the thermo/time switch. It's next to the coolant temp sensor in the intake crossover.

Peter

Peter,

Thanks, that clears things up a lot, mine has the nylon holders and I'll need the Upper and Green O-ring. I told my local auto parts house (not foreign specialty) to order whatever their book listed, from several different vendors, and we'd look 'em over and decide what was needed!

I gave the air valve a good douching with B-12 and Marvels Penetrating oil but didn't try whacking it, I'll take the big rawhide mallet to it tomorrow and see what happens. If this doesn't work I think I have an electric aux air valve from a Volvo, or Bimmer, laying around somewhere. I might plumb it in and hook a switched hot wire to it and put a block off plate in the manifold.

I suppose I can toss in another set of plugs (rubs me raw taking out plugs with 0 miles on 'em...) but I was kinda wanting to be pretty sure my rich condition was gone and it still smells a bit fat... I put about 2 more gallons of gas in it today (it's probably got about 4 gallons in it total) with a half bottle of Techron so we'll see if that help clean things up. Could the fact that I put on supression core wires cause a weak spark in these and cause carbon fouling? They're 8 mm Accell suppression core header wires.

As far as ECU adjust, I took off the knob and grabbed the shaft on the pot and it still wouldn't turn, I'll look for some kind of lock screw tomorrow as well.

I really appreciate the help and suggestions.

Justin B.

[Tomguy]

YES! The boots have built-in resistors in them - resisor wires will make the spark terribly weak!

Thanks for the info. I'm using a non-resistor silicone boot that came with the wire set. Do the stock wires use a solid conductor wire and 5 kohm boots? If so, I shoud probably be pretty close with these supression wires I would suspect.

Regards,

Justin B.

[Tomguy]

I believe it is a 1Kohm boot, not 5!

Hmmm, maybe I might need to get some different wires then...

[hill]

"I believe it is a 1Kohm boot, not 5!"

Absolutely 1K

Darryl,

Have been having trouble locating 1 K spark plug caps (5 Ks all over the place), do you see any problem with making up a set of Taylor SpiroPro wires? They have somewhere between 50-100 ohms per foot...

Thanks,

Justin B.

[psfred]

Justin:

You can either spring for a Beru factory set ($$$) or get a set of aftermarket solid wire ones for about $40. Mine are solid wire with MB spark plug caps, with platinum plugs (one electrode). Runs great on midgrage, getting 16 mpg mixed driving.

Peter

Problem is I don't have any "factory" plug ends. When I first started working on this I started checking for fire and found three plugs not firing so I chunked them and put on this Accell set. At that time I didn't realize the wires screwed into the ends or I would have just "screwed them back together!

Might go to junkyard tomorrow and if I can come up with 8 ends I might grab them and pick up a 25' spool of solid wire. If not, hopefully the low resistance, spiral core, high performance header wires will do the trick.

Justin B.

[hill]

The only thing I can say is if your engine # is less than 013489 you can get a set of Bosch wires for less than $80 at fastlane and $120 if the production is later. You might try an Upull it yard but how would you know if the ceramic ends are any good? The wire could read the right ohms but make the radio sound like a blender.

[Tomguy]

Fastlane has them for $16.46 each (look for "Spark Plug connector" under "Engine Electrical").