Whenever you are aware of abnormal symptoms on your vehicle, you are right to be intrigued, because a car represents a big annual budget and surprising malfunctions don’t reduce the expenses. So what if you think that you have a leaking injector on your Lexus IS? You probably figured it out thanks to black/oily drips along your engine, or a disturbed idle, or abnormal black smoke. These three signs of illness are the main symptoms of a leaking injector. As this troubles can produce more critical engine trouble on your car, we made a decision to compose this content to help you verify the failure of a leaking injector and deal with it properly. To achieve this, we will initially take a look at the case of gasoline injectors and then at those of diesel injectors Lexus IS.
Leaking injector on my petrol Lexus IS
It is important to know that the injectors on petrol and diesel engines are different, the reality is, the difference in combustion between these two types of engines makes the injection different. The key 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 Lexus IS: The different leaks
It should be known that injector leaks on a Lexus IS equipped with a petrol engine are pretty rare. This is due to the much lower pressure in the petrol intake systems. Even so, there are two types of leaks:
- Leakage from the top of the injector:
It is conceivable 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:
At last, you may encounter a leak coming from the lower part 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 Lexus IS
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 Lexus IS: The different leaks
In the case of leaking diesel injectors on your Lexus IS, there are three several types of leaks:
- Leakage from the injector inlet:
In cases like this, it is an inlet pipe that will deform over time, in most cases the leak will be at the clamping point. - Injector return leakage:
As its name reveals, this leakage relates to the management of the fuel return in the injector, this time the injector that leaks on your Lexus IS will be a consequence of 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 feel an air noise and a compression loss. - If after examining you have oil leaking but it does not come from your injectors, we suggest you to read this content on the existence of oil leaking on your Lexus IS.
Leaking injector on my Lexus IS, how to fix the leak
And at last, 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 sooner, to a worn seal caused by the pressures suffered. But think that the pressure in the circuit is gigantic, specifically on diesel engines. So you will have to take some precautions:
- 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.
Regarding the repair part of your leak, it will very often be restricted to swapping the seals that have failed:
- Find out the source of the leak
- Take apart 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 cases, these interventions are not necessarily complicated, but if you have the tiniest uncertainty in the treatment of your injector that leaks on your Lexus IS, we suggest you to get closer to your auto technician to avoid any bad handling that could significantly harm the condition of your Lexus IS.
If you have any further questions about the Lexus IS, do not hesitate to consult our Lexus IS category.
