If you are aware of irregular signs on your vehicle, you are right to be worried, because a car represents a massive annual budget and unforeseen malfunctions don’t lower the bill. So what if you feel as if you have a leaking injector on your BMW i3? You probably figured it out thanks to black/oily drips along your engine motor, or a troubled idle, or uncommon black smoke. These three signs of illness are the main indicators of a leaking injector. As this troubles can cause more significant engine problems on your car, we decided to prepare this article content to help you validate the failure of a leaking injector and handle it correctly. To achieve this, we will first look at the circumstance of gasoline injectors and then at those of diesel injectors BMW i3.
Leaking injector on my petrol BMW i3
It is crucial to know that the injectors on petrol and diesel engines are different, in fact, the difference in combustion between these two sort of engines makes the injection different. The essential difference lies in the pressure experienced by the injectors, on a petrol engine it will vary between 3.5 bars for indirect injection and 120 bars for indirect injection.
Leaking injector on a petrol BMW i3: The different leaks
It should be said that injector leaks on a BMW i3 equipped with a petrol engine are rather infrequent. This is because of the much lower pressure in the petrol intake systems. Even so, there are two sort of leaks:
- Leakage from the top of the injector:
It is plausible that you have a leak from the top of the injector, this is the component that is linked to the fuel rail, an O-ring will be involved in this. - Leak injector of the lower part:
Finally, you may encounter a leak coming from the lower portion of the injector of your car, this one will appear from the junction with the engine and not with the rail as seen before.
Leaking injector on my diesel BMW i3
Unlike petrol engines, which have spark combustion, diesel engines run on compression. This combustion procedure produces very high pressure in the engine, as do the injectors. On these models, the pressure is more than 10 times higher than on the direct injection of car petrol engines, reaching 1800 to 2000 bars.
Leaking injector on diesel BMW i3: The different leaks
In the circumstance of leaking diesel injectors on your BMW i3, there are three different sort of leaks:
- Leakage from the injector inlet:
In this case, it is an inlet pipe that will deform over time, usually the leak will be at the clamping point. - Injector return leakage:
As its name suggests, this leakage relates to the management of the fuel return in the injector, this time the injector that leaks on your BMW i3 will be caused by an O-ring or its plastic tip that leaks. - Injector base leak:
This injection leak is one of the most annoying, it is the junction between the engine and the injector nose that leaks at a copper seal, you should encounter an air noise and a compression loss. - If after examining you have oil leaking but it does not come from your injectors, we advise you to read this article content on the existence of oil leaking on your BMW i3.
Leaking injector on my BMW i3, how to fix the leak
And finally, we’re going to look at how to fix a leaking injector on your car. Regularly a leak is connected, as we have seen previously, to a worn seal caused by the pressures suffered. But think that the pressure in the circuit is tremendous, specifically on diesel engines. So you will have to take some safety measures:
- Lower the pressure before any work is conducted…
- Masking you to avoid the risk of fuel spillage
- NEVER work on a running diesel engine injector.
Concerning the repair part of your leak, it will regularly be limited to replacing the seals that have failed:
- Find out the source of the leak
- Take apart the injector in question
- Replace the corresponding seal kit
- Reassemble the assembly and tighten with a torque wrench in respect with the manufacturer’s standards.
In all cases, these interventions are not inevitably complicated, but if you have the smallest doubt in the treatment of your injector that leaks on your BMW i3, we advise you to get closer to your repair shop to avoid any bad handling that could significantly harm the condition of your BMW i3.
To get more tips on the BMW i3, take a look at the BMW i3 category.
