Ethanol in fuel-injector failures?

[texasoil]

I cannot 'prove' it, but I just had my 3rd fuel injector fail (open winding high resistance) in 1 month--2 on wife's 92a, and 1 on my 94a. These are the first and only injector failures I have ever had. Those on the 92 had no deposits on the tips and no visible trash etc in the screens--both failed with high resistance --1 went open, the other 25 ohms at injector vs 11.5-12.5 at the harness connector for other 6. They were working GREAT on shutdown (smooth 600 RPM idle , no load). On restart next morning-a dead miss and a weak cylinder too. Got lucky- both accessable.

On the 94- its still in the engine, same behavior--working fine, perfectly smooth idle, great power, perfectly smooth cold starts etc. On restart next morning--dead cylinder (#3) so now I gotta pull the plenum.

In neither case had engines been 'super-cleaned' or hosed down or anything or exhibited any warning symptoms. Kinda suspicous 3 failures shortly after ethanol added to the fuel and no previous history. Chevron fuel in all cases.

[Q451990]

Ouch! I'm sure Dennis will chime in here shortly... I'll be interested to see what he has to say.

Heath

[0wn3r]

http://autorepair.about.com/li...i.htm

you could probably google ethanol all day long...

[Skibane]

The coil in an injector is sealed, and not directly exposed to fuel. So, how could the presence of ethanol - in one part of the injector - ruin a coil that is located in a different part of the injector? What is it about ethanol that would make a coil open up?

I'm not disputing your experiences, but merely want to understand the failure mechanism -

[banshee08]

I feel your pain. I had two injectors go out in June (cylinder 1 and 7) on my 94 q45a. Then just last week my number 3 cylinder inject started to behave erratically and finally failed. It was working fine one night but after about 15 mins on the highway I had hesitation and the service light came on at 70mph. Then after another 5 miles, the service light turned off and everything seems fine again, but the next day the same problem reappeared but this time the problem did not go away. Now I am having the other six injectors replace. I have 110k on my q but I was not expecting 3 injector failures in 2 months.

-Chan

[Q45tech]

Failure to sample and chemically test* it BEFORE you buy the product loosely called gasoline.

* something as simple as letting 500ML sit over night in a graduated sealed glass column to see how much water separates out.

Without reference samples of each batch you buy hard to win in court.

So much for the ability of 94 injectors to tolerate water. What if the newer injector design to fix MTBE is worse for ethanol? In 94 gasoline used < 2.73% ethanol in US today the MTBE replacement has increased that 11 fold to 30%. [30% of US gasoline contains some ETHANOL mostly 10%]

http://www.aventinerei.com/pdf...c.pdf

[3rd Q]

Keith,

Sorry to hear. Welcome to life with ethanol-laced fuel.

I've replaced 31 injectors so far between 3 Qs. As I write this I am going out to ohm my harness since it feels like #32 and maybe #33 injector replacement is needed. Just bought 4 more injectors to have a couple spares. Don't be surprised to see new OEM injectors fail within months as well.

Love the car, the injectors suck.

Good luck.Paul

[Alowther]

Probably a stupid question, as I know little about meathenol and fuel blending, but what of putting a bottle of gas line antifreese in each tank of fuel? the stuff is cheap.

Of course as gas line antifreeze is methel hydrate and that sounds close to methenol, it might be the same thing.

Sorry, I am an accountant, not an engineer, just thought I would throw that out there.

Thanks

[BlueC]

I could care less what some of those sites say about fuel injector failure.

After switching to pure Premium Gasoline (vs. 10% Ethanol mix), it was pretty much a night and day difference. The car starts up much quicker with 0 hesitation. Before it would struggle sometimes when starting it with a cold engine, now it has no trouble. I know the effects of ethanol and I can tell you it DOES impact the fuel system along with performance/efficiency. I noticed atleast 1mpg of an increase on average. My driving habits change a lot, but with heavy driving i no longer dip into the 14mpg-15mpg range, yet stay around 16-17mpg now. And that is with an exact calculation between fillups like Ive done previously.

[3rd Q]

Hey, Keith!

Well it's injectors #32 and #33 for me- #1 ohms at 56.4 and #8 is at 17.1!Less than 22 months and 25k miles on these. Actually, since I replaced all 8 just under 2 years ago with oem, this will make a total of 5 I've had to re-replace . The only benefit is you get really good at pulling the plenum- this will be the 10th time for me.

Paul

[Q451990]

Hey, Keith!

Well it's injectors #32 and #33 for me- #1 ohms at 56.4 and #8 is at 17.1!Less than 22 months and 25k miles on these. Actually, since I replaced all 8 just under 2 years ago with oem, this will make a total of 5 I've had to re-replace . The only benefit is you get really good at pulling the plenum- this will be the 10th time for me.

Paul

WOW! That is absolutely amazing... I love my Q, but I would be tempted to punt if I got to this point!

Heath

[3rd Q]

Well,I mis-spoke about pulling the plenum - originally thought #4 needed replacing- #1 & #8 are 2 of the three most accessible- I was done with the replacements in 35 minutes.Great to have a smooth idle again!

Keith,No need to "prove" anything as far as these failures go. I think as more parts of the country are exposed to ethanol we will see a huge increase in injectors dying and a lot more posts about it on NICO. Curious if anyone else is having recent failures after ethanol hit their area?

Paul

[Romeo5k]

well well well...i feel like crap.. So the cause of all this is dat stupid ethanol junk... Wheres my 12gage.. im about to blow up my gas station. Here goes the thing.. i have a 93 Q.. and it werked fine until approx last month or so. All of a sudden i started having shaking probs zer...63423 i take like extra care of my car. And fuel pump has been replaced. So im trying to figure out what cause all this.. and now that i think about it.. its the ethanol. i knew it was but ppl kept say ethanol helps ur car. If it did, why are they just putting it in the gas in 2006? Well anyway.. i read about about testing the water in gas or something like that. Well ive been buying my gas from one gas station for the past 2 yrs now. And i wanna see if ethanol messed up his gas..if so,,,, i need to move around.

[elwesso]

Paul, do you by chance save any of your old injectors?

[Romeo5k]

elwesso.. u still do hosting?http://www.q45.org/hosting.html

[Jesda]

elwesso.. u still do hosting?http://www.q45.org/hosting.html

Yes, but we're switching to a new server, so its on hold until the end of the month.

[Romeo5k]

thnx Jesda

[3rd Q]

Wes,I still have these last 2 bad ones. In general, I toss them since I'm so p*ssed off at them by the time I remove them, especially after pulling the plenum. To show how paranoid I've become about injector failures, I almost didn't put the bad ones in the same box with my 2 extra good ones for fear of the crappy ones putting their funky mojo hex on the good ones .

When I initially replaced all 8 a couple of years ago on this car, I should have kept 5 of them since only 3 were ohming bad. I figured I'd never need to replace another injector again on this '90, so I tossed them. Man, was I deluded ! Should have known better after already replacing 20 on my other 2 Qs .

Paul
Modified by 3rd Q at 2:25 AM 8/11/2006

[3rd Q]

well well well...i feel like crap.. So the cause of all this is dat stupid ethanol junk... Wheres my 12gage.. im about to blow up my gas station. Here goes the thing.. i have a 93 Q.. and it werked fine until approx last month or so. All of a sudden i started having shaking probs zer...63423 i take like extra care of my car. And fuel pump has been replaced. So im trying to figure out what cause all this.. and now that i think about it.. its the ethanol. i knew it was but ppl kept say ethanol helps ur car. If it did, why are they just putting it in the gas in 2006? Well anyway.. i read about about testing the water in gas or something like that. Well ive been buying my gas from one gas station for the past 2 yrs now. And i wanna see if ethanol messed up his gas..if so,,,, i need to move around.

I'd ohm the injectors. Classic symptom of them going bad.

Paul