In the event that you are alert of irregular symptoms on your vehicle, you are right to be concerned, because a car represents a huge annual budget and surprising malfunctions don’t lower the costs. So what if you think that you have a leaking injector on your Kia Sorento? You almost certainly figured it out thanks to black/oily drips along your engine unit, or a disturbed idle, or strange black smoke. These three symptoms are the main indicators of a leaking injector. As this troubles can end up in more serious engine concerns on your car, we decided to produce this content to help you confirm the failure of a leaking injector and deal with it correctly. To do this, we will initially take a look at the case of gasoline injectors and then at those of diesel injectors Kia Sorento.
Leaking injector on my petrol Kia Sorento
It is important to know that the injectors on petrol and diesel engines are different, in fact, the difference in combustion between these two types of engines makes the injection different. The key difference lies in the pressure undergone 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 Kia Sorento: The different leaks
It should be noted that injector leaks on a Kia Sorento equipped with a petrol engine are pretty rare. This is because of the much lower pressure in the petrol intake systems. Nevertheless, 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 part that is connected to the fuel rail, an O-ring will be involved in this. - Leak injector of the lower part:
At last, you may suffer a leak coming from the lower portion of the injector of your car, this one will occur from the junction with the engine and not with the rail as seen previously.
Leaking injector on my diesel Kia Sorento
Unlike petrol engines, which have spark combustion, diesel engines run on compression. This combustion system creates 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 Kia Sorento: The different leaks
In the case of leaking diesel injectors on your Kia Sorento, there are three several types of leaks:
- Leakage from the injector inlet:
In this case, it is an inlet pipe that will deform after a while, usually the leak will be at the clamping point. - Injector return leakage:
As its name implies, this leakage concerns the management of the fuel return in the injector, this time the injector that leaks on your Kia Sorento 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 find an air noise and a compression loss. - If after checking you have oil leaking but it does not come from your injectors, we recommend you to browse this content on the presence of oil leaking on your Kia Sorento.
Leaking injector on my Kia Sorento, how to fix the leak
And finally, we’re going to take a look at how to fix a leaking injector on your car. Oftentimes a leak is linked, as we have seen previously, to a worn seal caused by the pressures endured. But think that the pressure in the circuit is enormous, specifically on diesel engines. So you will have to take some precautions:
- Lower the pressure before any work is carried out…
- Covering 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 oftentimes be restricted to swapping the seals that have failed:
- Find the source of the leak
- Dismantle the injector in question
- Replace the corresponding seal kit
- Reassemble the set up and tighten with a torque wrench in accordance with the manufacturer’s standards.
In all cases, these interventions are not automatically difficult, but if you have the slightest hesitation in the treatment of your injector that leaks on your Kia Sorento, we recommend you to get closer to your motor mechanic to avoid any bad handling that could severely harm the condition of your Kia Sorento.
If you need more tutorials on the Kia Sorento, go to our Kia Sorento category.
