How To Clean Your Dirty Or Clogged Fuel Injectors

hey how's it going folks today I'm going to show you how you can pinpoint and find a dirty or clogged fuel injector now the procedure for finding a dirty fuel injector is different from the procedure for finding a bad fuel injector so today I'm going to show you both procedures but not just that I'm also going to show you how you can attempt to clean one of these by rigging up a DIY fuel injector cleaner that costs less than ten bucks so in order to find a dirty fuel injector you'll need two things first if you'll pressure gauge and second a fuel injector tester which looks like this and no there's no way around it you'll need these two items but fear none these are not very expensive together they might even cost less than a fuel injector and as always I've put links to the tools and parts used in this video in the description box for you to check out and know these two companies are not sponsoring this video these are simply tools I like to use myself yeah getting these is a no brainer especially when you consider it on some cars it's very difficult to actually get to the fuel injectors to replace all of them not to mention the cost but not just that you want to make sure your problem is actually dirty or clogged fuel injectors before you spend the time and money trying to replace them in so many words buy the proper tools or learn how to correctly diagnose issues with your engine instead of you fix you god damn it do what I did there you don't want to throw parts at your problems what I'm saying alright now in order for you to understand why you exactly need this fuel injector tester you're going to need a basic understanding of how the fuel injection system works on your car so we're just going to take it about 30 seconds and quickly go over how the fuel injection system on your car works on this white board and we'll start this at the fuel pump this fella right in here so the job of your fuel pump is to pump and maintain fuel pressure inside your fuel system all the way to the tip of your fuel injectors now how much pressure exactly it's going to vary based on your car's make and model but for the sake of argument we'll say 60 psi now the way your fuel injectors work is that when you turn the key to the run or start position or on some makes and models the on or start position you send constant battery voltage through a fuse to all your fuel injectors and this fuse is usually found inside your under-the-hood fuse box so here on this little diagram you can see number 16 says injectors and has a 10 F fuse which on our fuse bar would make this fuse or injective fuse and away your fuel injectors are turned on an office through the ground wire which is connected to your ECM or your electronic control module which on this car is conveniently located right here so as your engine is running and as the load increases and decreases on your engine your ECM controls the pulse width on the ground side to each fuel injector and the amount of time ground is supplied to each fuel injectors very precise and also very fast we're talking milliseconds and that's where this fuel injector tester comes in this is going to allow us to supply both ground and voltage for exact and precise amount of time to each fuel injector all right they're not talking now let me show you how you can actually perform the testing procedures all right so first we'll cover a couple of ways you can tell whether you have a completely shot or dead fuel injector so for the first method you need a multimeter any basic cheap multimeter will do doesn't have to be a fancy one so what we're going to do is basically measure these injectors for resistance so first thing you want to do is obviously turn on your multimeter and switch the dial on your multimeter to the ohm setting which is ohms being the unit of measurement for resistance and where you want to set this to it's going to be the next sitting above the measurement you expecting to measure for resistance on these fuel injectors now they're usually not going to be that high like these injectors I believe to be just you know just below 20 so we're going to put them on 200 so next you would basically just go down the line and measure the fuel injectors for resistance so on this one we got fifteen point five fifteen point six this one we got pretty much the same exact thing fifteen point five again for this one as well you know you may need to know the exact resistance your fuel injectors are supposed to have you can just pretty much compare the readings you get if you have one or two that stand out when you compare to the other ones those are going to be your bad fuel injectors now the second way you can tell whether you have a bad fuel injector or not is to basically listen to the fuel injectors as the engine is operating and you're due there you'll need a long screwdriver like this or a mechanic stethoscope like this one and by the way if I have any female viewers watching these videos I just want to say I ain't no dying ecologist but if you it's like an opinion I'll see what I can do that was on call for them probably too much but I'm keeping it at least an essay don't throw all right so back to the lecture at hand first thing you want to do is to start your vehicle and then while the engine is running you want to go around with your stethoscope or your long screwdriver and touch the base of every fuel injector just make sure your stethoscope or screw driver is not touching anything else that way you don't mix up any other noises with taking noise of your fuel injectors and again the fuel injector that sounds worse than the others is usually going to be your bad fuel injector especially if you have a misfire code for the cylinder for which that fuel injector is for all right so those were some things you could do to find a dead fuel injector but not necessarily a dirty fuel injector RS owner to find dirty fuel injectors first thing you need to do is to locate your fuel pressure port which is usually going to be on your fuel rail remove the little plastic cap grab your fuel pressure gauge and with the right adapter screw it onto your fuel pressure port make sure you get it nice and tight so that there are no leaks okay alright so next we look at your repairs manual and find out the fuel pressure that you're supposed to have for your cars make a model for this car which is a 2004 Saturn Ion the fuel pressure should be between 50 to 60 psi so next we're going to get in the car and turn the key to the on position and make sure a fuel pump is priming and then observe our reading alright here we go [Music] all right so as you can see we got actually exactly 50 psi right now which is within spec also I should mention that you might want to cycle your key to the on and off position a couple of times especially if you did any repairs into your fuel system recently so that you get all the area also with the key in the on position and the engine not running your fuel pressure and your rail might decrease a little bit that's normal you just want to make sure you wait a couple of minutes until this reading stabilizes through you onto the next step now if your fuel pressure is not within spec no matter how many times you cycle your keys on and off then your problem is not your fuel injectors it's more likely going to be your fuel pump that's on its way out but it could be other things and we'll save diagnosing those issues for a separate video though alright so what we're going to do next is to undo the connector for a fuel injector so on this harness we first need to pull out on this screen safety tab like this and then we press on this black tab and then pull out the connector you know what I want to completely remove this thing now it's just come on is you there alright now if you want to check the wire integrity to your fuel injectors and also make sure that you're getting both the ground signal and you have power at your fuel injector well you'll need to do is to grab yourself a test light and connect it to ground and with the key in the on position one of these should have constant power as we talked about earlier so it's not the first pin so it has to be this one there you go there you have it now if you don't have power to your fuel injectors the first thing you should check is the fuse for your fuel injectors and if your fuse is good and you have power at your fuse then your problem is in the wiring from your fuse to your fuel injectors now energy test the ground wire for our injector we get our test light again and this time we connect it to our battery positive next we get in our car start the engine and then connect our test light to the ground wire on our connector and then we should see our test light flash all right so they're got the first leg connected to our ground wire and as you can see it is flashing so there we just verify that we are indeed getting a fuel injector signal and also that our ground wire is in good condition so here comes the fun part you grab your fuel injector tester you connect one end of it to battery positive and a good ground and the other end of it to the two pens for your fuel injector make sure you have good contacts with the pins for your fuel injector and that will check your ground with a test light if you're using a chassis ground as well all right so on our injector tester as you can see we get four different pulse modes we got a short medium long and continuous mode those modes are going to basically simulate the amount of time a ground is supplied to your fuel injector when the engine is running now I usually go with simply the second mode which is a medium mode and now when we hit this pulse button around this apply to our fuel injector completing a circuit opening our fuel injector and then as a result we should see a fuel pressure drop and what you need to do is to precisely measure the pressure drop in your fuel system so as you can see we got exactly 44 psi here so now I'm going to hit the pause button on our injector tester and there and we dropped all the way down to precisely 25 psi so there that was exactly 19 psi of pressure drop in the medium pulse mode for this cylinder which is solar number 4 next all you have to do is to repeat this for all your fuel injectors and you have to start at exactly 44 psi and then measure how much of a pressure drop each fuel injector has when it's activated with the medium pulse mode on this fuel injector tester and all your fuel injectors should have almost the same exact amount of pressure drop now after only off by 1 psi then that's usually okay but you should double check your work but if they're off by 2 psi or more then that's a definite sign of a clogged or dirty fuel injector now here's something I just thought of seeing a lot of cars you don't have easy access to the connectors for all your fuel injectors on this car we have easy access to this solar number 4 and maybe for cylinder number 1 but 2 & 3 are hard to get to so how can we hack the system given what we know hmm well it's kind of easy first you'll need to get the wiring diagram for your car's fuel injection system so here's a wiring diagram for this car these are fuse you get battery positive coming into this fuse and then from on here goes to each and every single fuel injector on this car but we're actually interested in the ground wires and more specifically where they go and exactly which pin on the connector for your ECU they connect to so we got pin 56 and 57 four cylinders one and two and 77 and 78 four cylinders three and four and this is obviously your switch and this one is obviously a broomstick which is next to your ECM all right getting aside that's a ridiculous symbol for a grant but that's what they mean and this is where your ECM grounds your fuel injectors so you guess that the plan is to find the corresponding pin for whatever a fuel injector you want to test and then connect this grounding wire from our fuel injector tester to that pin and then supply ground using your fuel injector tester and then of course see how much of a fuel pressure drop we have for that injector now this of course requires somewhat of an easy access to your ECU and wiring diagrams and also should mention that if you decide to go this route you should do the test for all your injectors at the ECM don't do some of them at the injector and then some at the ECM do all at the same place all right so next we're going to remove our connector like go to our ECM alright next we need to remove this plastic cover because we need to back probe the grounding wires for our fuel injectors so this goes back in alright so back to the wiring diagram let's say we want to test fuel injector number three as you can see this is going to be pin number 77 on the connector that goes to our ECM and that wire is going to be a pink and black so here as you're hopefully able to see that's pin number 77 this last one is pin 80 so if you just go back that's going to make it our wire it's the same color and as you can see it's back probed and again as you can see I got it connected to the ground wire for a fuel injector tester and the power wire out of our fuel injector tester can hang loose just make sure it's not touching your ground chassis ground or something but once more we would cycle our key on off to get some fuel pressure in our fuel rail alright so once again we gotta test this on mode two and when I hit this pulse button this should work oh yeah alright in anticipation of this test to see whether it works I forgot to write down the before and after fuel pressure on the gauge that's okay cuz there's nothing wrong with this card I'm just doing this for demonstration purposes plus there's and a lot of YouTube experts out there that are gonna definitely let me know if I did anything wrong I'm sure alright so that was awesome I know but now let's say you find a dirty fuel injector and you want to try to clean it before you go out and buy it because maybe it's very expensive or maybe it's even simply hot too hard to find so here's what you'll need to do grab your fuel injector and remove the two o-rings they go at the two ends of it then get yourself an assortment set of marine heat shrink tubing make sure that said you buy has a heat activated adhesive lining on the inside of it that's very important for what we're about to do and of course get yourself a can of carb cleaner this is going to be both our cleaning agent and the source of our pressure alright so the idea is to run pressurized carb cleaner through our fuel injector so we need to find a way to connect that into top of that and that seal needs to be airtight so that's where the heat shrink tubing comes in and in between each step down in size starting from our fuel injector we're going to put smaller and smaller rubber hoses until we get to our carb cleaner alright so first we'll start off by securing this larger rubber hose to the top of our fuel injector using this clamp there we go and next we'll grab a corresponding piece from our heat shrink tubing set which is going to fit over this rubber hose then using a lighter we're going to shrink this tubing at the same time activate the adhesive lining on the inside of it now you are going to be working around carb cleaner so you want to be very careful and also if you can just use a soldering iron which is going to be a lot safer because it doesn't include you know fire all right I should do it for this end now the diameter of this thing is simply too small so we're going to do sexually put some heat shrink tubing around it then he ded up and that should bring up the diameter of this thing you do want to be very careful because you can burn and destroy the straw itself and then you have to go get another one and here you have it folks our ten dollar fuel injector cleaner alright so here's a look at our setup got the fuel injector here got it connected to our fuel injector tester and I'm going to be using that to activate our fuel injector and then run car cleaner through it you don't need this you can just do it manually by touching one of these alligator clips to your battery source of course you need a battery source get a 12-volt battery here alright so first we'll activate our fuel injector and then start spraying car cleaner there we go if you guys can see this let's pray then I get you guys a close-up shot so you can see this there you go let's see it better not that's pretty cool all right now let's try this on the short pulse mode see how it looks like there you go that's not bad and the medium pulse mode there you have it and a third long pulse mode that was pretty cool and the next step should be to back push your fuel injector you simply remove it flip it around reinstall it and then run coupling it through it again and that should back flush it and help being all the varnish out of it now a test you can do to see whether you're able to clean your fuel injector or not is to simply reinstall it back on your fuel rail connect your pressure lines back to your fuel rail and then connect your fuel pressure gage back to your fuel rail cycle your key and then run your injector tester and then compare your results to what it was before if you made any improvements then you have cleaned your fuel injectors so that's it hope you enjoyed this video if you did do me a favor and share this video on your favorite social network and also consider checking out these other related videos of which I've put links to on this side of the screen that you can click on there also be links in description box down below as well alright thanks for watching I'll see you guys next

Channel: Ratchets And Wrenches

Views: 3,308,821

Keywords: Rathcets and Wrenches, clean fuel injectors, clean fuel injectors yourself, clean fuel injectors without removal, fuel injector cleaning, fuel injector cleaner, fuel injector replacement, how to find and diagnose a dirty fuel injector, clogged fuel injector, carbon build up fuel injection, fuel system cleaning, P0171, system too lean bank 1, P0174, system too lean bank 2, symptoms of a dirty fuel injecotr, clogged fuel injector symptoms, how to clean fuel injectors, varnish, carbon

Id: XhYEDkpF3Qs

Length: 17min 22sec (1042 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 28 2016