D5 Injector Leakback Test

[JimmyBurnWorld]

As long as I've had the vehicle, it has had a problem where it stalls after idling for a period of time, most noticibly (and irritatingly) when in traffic. After being sat idling for a bit, I go to move off, press the accelerator and the engine just dies off. This is accompanied by 'Engine System Service Urgent'.

I've had the codes read and cleared several times now, and they're always the same ECM2503 and ECM2505 - Fuel Pressure too low - Which ties in with the dying off symptom.

The engine also sounds like it misses occasionally when it's idling.

So I got by blue peter badges out and made myself an injector leakback test rig. Here is a little write up and some photos;

first of all the rig build. 5 x 500ml water bottles (all the same size for easy comparison), gaffer taped to a piece of wood. The caps of the bottles were drilled with 1 x 6mm hole for the tubing and 1 x 4.5mm hole to act as a breather. I brought some clear wahser tuning from a motor factors (3m) cut into 5 equal (0.6m) lengths. One end was pushed through the hole in the bottle cap so that there was about 50mm inside the bottle. This was because I had no idea how much flow this would generate so I didn't want diesel spraying straight out of the breather hole.

Attachment 13680
Attachment 13681

I then removed the drain pipes from the top of each of the injectors. Each drain is held in place with a spring clip. The pipe fitting for the drain tube is quite a firm fit due to it having an o-ring on the end of the fitting. Some polite firm upward wiggling removed them.
Note: If you try to do this one injector at a time, you will need to blank off the fitting you have removed as the other injectors will flow out of the removed fitting.

Attachment 13682

This left me with a hole in the top of the injector, and no fitting to attach tube to. Fortunatley the washer tube will push fit into the drain hole. I got my tube to push in a good 5mm, and this gave a good leak proof seal.

Attachment 13683

I placed the rig in the gap between the front of the engine and the radiator, resting ontop of the dreaded EGR mixer plenum (Cleaned last year). The engine was then started and left to idle.

Attachment 13684

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-Y3cpz6jPnA?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

http://youtu.be/-Y3cpz6jPnA

After about 5 minutes I switched off and disconnected the rig. The results are as below:

Attachment 13685

As can be seen, injector 2 produced the most leak back, although not significant compared to the others.

Is it worth swapping no. 2 out? I noticed on the part numbers for the injectors that I have 2 of one number, and 3 of another, however the camera batteries died before I took a photo. I will follow up with those. All 5 injectors have a number '2' in a circle (I'm guessing this is the class number).