In cases where you are alert of irregular symptoms on your car, you are right to be worried, because a car represents a huge annual budget and unexpected malfunctions don’t reduce the expenses. So what if you find that you have a leaking injector on your Ford Flex? You most likely figured it out thanks to black/oily drips along your engine unit, or a troubled idle, or strange black smoke. These three manifestations are the main symptoms of a leaking injector. As this failure can produce more critical engine trouble on your car, we thought we would compose this content to help you confirm the failure of a leaking injector and handle it correctly. To do so, we will initially check out the circumstance of gasoline injectors and then at those of diesel injectors Ford Flex.
Leaking injector on my petrol Ford Flex
It is vital to know that the injectors on petrol and diesel engines are distinct, in reality, the difference in combustion between these two types of engines makes the injection distinct. The biggest 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 Ford Flex: The different leaks
It should be known that injector leaks on a Ford Flex equipped with a petrol engine are pretty infrequent. This is caused by the much lower pressure in the petrol intake systems. However, there are two types of leaks:
- Leakage from the top of the injector:
It is possible 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 experience a leak coming from the lower part of the injector of your car, this one will come from the junction with the engine and not with the rail as seen before.
Leaking injector on my diesel Ford Flex
Unlike petrol engines, which have spark combustion, diesel engines run on compression. This combustion system 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 Ford Flex: The different leaks
In the circumstance of leaking diesel injectors on your Ford Flex, there are three different types of leaks:
- Leakage from the injector inlet:
In this instance, it is an inlet pipe that will deform with time, in most cases 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 Ford Flex will be the result of an O-ring or its plastic tip that leaks. - Injector base leak:
This injection leak is one of the most troublesome, it is the junction between the engine and the injector nose that leaks at a copper seal, you should feel an air noise and a compression loss. - If after verifying you have oil leaking but it does not come from your injectors, we suggest you to browse this content on the presence of oil leaking on your Ford Flex.
Leaking injector on my Ford Flex, how to fix the leak
And to finish, we’re going to check out how to fix a leaking injector on your car. Regularly a leak is linked, as we have seen sooner, to a worn seal because of the pressures suffered. But think that the pressure in the circuit is tremendous, especially on diesel engines. So you will have to take some measures:
- Lower the pressure before any work is done…
- Covering you to avoid the risk of fuel spillage
- NEVER work on a running diesel engine injector.
Regarding the repair part of your leak, it will very often be limited to swapping the seals that have failed:
- Find the source of the leak
- Dismantle the injector in question
- Change the corresponding seal kit
- Reassemble the assembly and tighten with a torque wrench in accordance with the manufacturer’s standards.
In all situations, these interventions are not automatically very hard, but if you have the slightest hesitation in the treatment of your injector that leaks on your Ford Flex, we suggest you to get closer to your mechanic to avoid any bad manipulation that could critically harm the condition of your Ford Flex.
If you need more guides on the Ford Flex, go to our Ford Flex category.
