[EvanTheBruce]

A few of you on here may have seen my previous threads of having rough idle and reduced power combined with shakes under acceleration in my car. Well, the problem is back again the a day after I installed Iaknown's intake! Luckily I have a nuclear proof 3800 series Grand Prix as a backup car!

Situation:During the first week of December, my car started to run really rough after a 37km/h run at 140km/h on the highway. As I merged off the exit, around 70km/h, the car started to misfire. This was also the same time my part of the country got it's first freeze of the year. Temperature was -7°c. I first diagnosed this as fuel gelling because stations were in the middle of the winter/summer diesel blends of fuel at that time. In order to resolve this issue, I went to my friends farm to get some kerosene from his pump. I pumped 4 liters of kerosene (#1 diesel) into my tank then went to a truckstop off the main highway and grabbed some diesel from their pumps. The issue did not resolve immediately, however, within 10km of driving the car smoothed out and the power was restored - as well as fuel economy.

On 5/1/17, I drove to work at 4:30am as usual, the car started fine in my garage and as I was driving to work I experienced one "hiccup" under accerlation. When I got to work, it was around 5:30am and temperatures were -20°c, I parked the car outside all day until 19:00. Upon starting my car, it took 4 glow plug cycles to get going. When it did, it choked on itself started and was idling really rough. I figure it just had cold fuel and needed to warm up. While driving the car felt like it had lower power as it did before. I took it easy until I got to the highway and set my cruise to 140km/h as I always do, the accerlation there had noticeable vibrations with it, but when I was going steady the car felt fine. I repeated the same method as last time in attempt to resolve the issue and let the car sit in my heated garage over the weekend. Today it had the same issue. When I got home tonight from work, I decided to do some troubleshooting.


Diagnosis: I tested the injectors with the engine cover off with a stethoscope, listeining for the injectors pinging as they opened and closed. To do this, the cabin filter needed to be removed in order to access the rear two injectors. Cylinder #5 and #3 both sounded hollow. To confirm that these may actually have failed, I pulled the plug on each injector. When I pulled the connector for the #5 injector idle stayed the same rather than dropping and stutterng. It was determined that my #5 injector has failed.



Replacement and Recalibration DIY coming soon...

[Persian Whisperjet]

Very interesting. After the nuclear holocaust, the Gran Prix will still be running. And every Mercedes 300D on the planet.

[EvanTheBruce]

Originally Posted by Persian Whisperjet

Very interesting. After the nuclear holocaust, the Gran Prix will still be running. And every Mercedes 300D on the planet.

I used to have a 190D, should have ever gotten rid of it. The car is still running today with approximately 830,000km on the clock. Approximately because the gauge cluster failed at 560,000 km

[DozerDan82]

replacement is easy all in all. Where are you located, I may have a known good, used injector for you.

[EvanTheBruce]

Originally Posted by DozerDan82

replacement is easy all in all. Where are you located, I may have a known good, used injector for you.

I'm in Northwest Indiana. The warranty company is buying me 6 injectors from BMW. Luckily I have a shop account with my local dealer, $542.87 per injector my cost. Not too bad compared to online sources. I'll save the good injectors and have them sent out for testing and use them as spares if this happens again in the future. I change my fuel filter every 10k miles with my oil and oil filter so I don't anticipate to have anymore issues in the future. I'm the second owner of this car, I purchased it at 101k miles from BMW. PO had an extended warranty on it but obviously it was not meticulously maintained as a diesel should be.

[Persian Whisperjet]

Originally Posted by EvanTheBruce

I change my fuel filter every 10k miles with my oil and oil filter so I don't anticipate to have anymore issues in the future. I'm the second owner of this car, I purchased it at 101k miles from BMW. PO had an extended warranty on it but obviously it was not meticulously maintained as a diesel should be.

Evan is there are benefit to injector longevity to more frequent fuel filter changes? I'm right around 22K and was planning to wait for the next oil change which would be 24K.

[montr]

Originally Posted by Persian Whisperjet

Evan is there are benefit to injector longevity to more frequent fuel filter changes? I'm right around 22K and was planning to wait for the next oil change which would be 24K.

Usually, filters get more efficient at filtering as they get loaded. The problem is that the flow rate decrease as the filter get loaded.

[Capn Crunch]

Common rail injection systems can be problematic without regular fuel filter changes. Unless you are getting dirty fuel 10k is probably a little excessive but wont harm anything. More importantly is the number of microns the filter will filter out of the fuel. A 2 micron filter is one of the best things you can do to improve injector life span.