Had injectors rebuilt and the engine runs worse? What's goin on!?
 

Had my injectors rebuilt at a reputable Bosch shop nearby in Worcester. Purchased NOS Bosch France nozzles from a forum member and had them installed to cure my nailing problem. Car has 200k miles and the injectors are original, so I figured what the heck.

Re installed and the car runs worse.
- misses on startup a few times (didn't before)
- smokes more at idle
- idles worse
- accelerates worse

Ran the car hard for a 100 miles on the highway with no improvement.

What the heck could be going on?

Didn't change anything else on the engine except the heat shields.

Thanks much in advance,
dd

PS Im having the worst luck with this thing!

I'm not sure about the french nozzles, but I know several people have not been happy with the Bosch nozzles.

That sounds like a tough problem to figure out. One possibility would be renaming the car. It could feel like and oddball in Boston. How about "Clam"?

Did you put the heat shields in correctly? Any chance you may have flipped one?

liet-
Heat shields are 100% in correctly. I took extra care since one of the old heat shields was not in correctly.

Car is from dallas/forth worth and still has its texas registration stickers on it, so I thought the name fit....must of been a bad choice :-/

But seriously, if a injector pops and sprays correctly, how can it be bad right off the bat?

Sounds to me like someone botched the rebuild. Those symptoms sound like bad spray patterns.

Sounds like the "reputable shop" is the problem here.

Had the pump timing ever been tweaked while running the old/bad injs?

Not by me. I have checked it using the drip method and determined it is close - within a couple degrees. My chain stretch is somewhere in the 4 degree range.

Ill call gthe shop today and see what the deal is.

I have had no other reports of the nozzles being bad, having had several other batches go out to people.

It would be good if the shop volunteered to set each injector up for you and show you the spray pattern. They should do this if you report problems.

Personally, I am aware that there are honest and dishonest people in the automotive repair business. Unless you really know the people you dealt with, then you don't really know what they could have done. For example, keeping your nice new French injector nozzles for themselves and subsituting Indian nozzles for your rebuild. That's a horrible thing to think has happened, and I mention it just as a possibility if you happen to open one of the injectors yourself for inspection. It could happen on purpose or by mistake.

I don't have the nozzles in front of me to look at, and can't remember if they have identification on them to let you be sure that your nozzles were used in the rebuild.

So, that gives you two avenues to investigate: Verify the nozzles and verify the spray patterns.

Otherwise I believe you should have reasonable confidence the nozzles I shipped you are good. I sure expect them to be as I have a reserve supply for my own cars.

Ken300D

Take the injectors back for another check. There is a very small possibility that someone tweaked the pump for individual bad injectors but not very likely. Did they check the old nozzles for spray and pop pressures before changing the nozzles?

I doubt they did this - I'm sure they just rebuilt with the nozzles I gave them.

Ill give them a call this afternoon.

Update
 

Took my injectors back to the shop. They invited me back into the shop to watch the pop and spray without me even asking.

Watched them pop and spray the five. Great pattern, and popped right at 135 bar. They're fine.


So...........who's got the RIV tool again? :D

Time for chain timing, pump timing, compression. My theory is the PO advanced timing to compensate for early popping injectors. So I need to set it back.

So yes, you CAN have your injectors rebuilt and your car run worse. Unless I have done something else stupid, which is certainly a possibility. But there wasn't much to mess up reassembling and I went really slow.

dd

Good luck, keep us posted.

Most injection shop workers know nothing about the type of injector in our cars. If you ask them what they are going to do to your injectors and they do not specifically mention "pintle holes", keep looking.