Petrol injectors. A Godsend or a nightmare!

[saturnuranus]

Wotcha folks! For the benefit of anyone considering cleaning their injectors, I would like to add my experience of Jims cleaning service to this thread.

For starters, delivery time. As Jim has already stated, he cleans them on the same day he receives. I sent mine on a Tuesday afternoon, and they arrived back with me on Thursday morning via Royal Mail Recorded 1st. Make sure you send them in a heavily padded jiffy bag or preferably a box, as mine arrived at Jims slightly damaged. Lessons to be learnt!

Jim kept in touch throughout the cleaning process, and I have a picture of the flow-rate test before cleaning demonstrating that one of my injectors was duff, so had to be replaced. Fortunately Jim had a spare, but I now owe him for that one!

Once I received them back, I spent the rest of the evening re-assembling my renewed PCV system and fitting my cleaned injectors. I decided to replace the O-rings at the top and bottom of each injector and the small rubber washer that fits between the injector and the rail. I got all these for £10 from my local stealer, which Jim said is a bit pricey. I'll go elsewhere next time!

Jim was eager for some feedback regarding improvements in stability and performance of my engine, so I took it out for a blast that evening, only for a boost hose to pop off and the top hose to be leaking, which needed replacing. More lessons learnt!

After finally getting her roadworthy again, I was able to fully appreciate the magic of the work Jim had done. Straight away I noticed the car idling perfectly. For 150,000 miles I expect the odd stutter or lump when idling, but nothing, nada! Taking it on the motorway and a couple of dual carriageways I was able to relish the absence of an occasional misfire I used to get when accelerating from about 3/3.5k, not to mention vastly, and I mean vastly, improved power delivery. It's hard to describe, but immediately I found myself thinking this thing drives like new, it's great! She accelerates hard and smooth right round to the redline, as she should. Jims flow test showed one of my injectors delivering around 60% more fuel than the other 4, which as he described, will cause the system to compensate for the incorrect mixture by leaning it, meaning 4 cylinders are running lean and one is ok.

Lastly, fuel economy. I've been running round now for about a week with the computer reset, and doing my usual work run each day. My average pre-cleaning was about 23mpg. The meter is currently telling me my average is 25.8mpg, and improvement of 2.8mpg. I know these computers aren't perfect, but the journey I do is a pretty consistent sitting-in-a-jam affair, so the increase is quite believable to me. I'll report back in a few weeks time once I've got a few more journeys under my belt.

Overall? Im impressed. Jim's service is quick, easy, cheap and personal. He called to confirm I had received the injectors back and then gave me a full report on what he had found, and the work carried out. This all goes without saying that he's a jolly nice chap to deal with!

For the sake of the £40 or so it's going to cost and the couple of hours work removing and refitting, it's well worth it. My dad was also suitably impressed and will be sending his injectors to Jim within the next couple of weeks.

Bravo!