Whenever you are informed of unusual symptoms on your vehicle, you are right to be intrigued, because a car represents a big annual budget and unforeseen malfunctions don’t reduce the expenses. So what if you sense that you have a leaking injector on your Nissan Sentra? You almost certainly figured it out thanks to black/oily drips along your engine unit, or a troubled idle, or strange black smoke. These three signs of illness are the main indicators of a leaking injector. As this troubles can bring on more severe engine problems on your car, we decided to prepare this content to help you validate the failure of a leaking injector and deal with it properly. To accomplish this, we will first of all look at the circumstance of gasoline injectors and then at those of diesel injectors Nissan Sentra.
Leaking injector on my petrol Nissan Sentra
It is fundamental 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 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 Nissan Sentra: The different leaks
It should be mentioned that injector leaks on a Nissan Sentra equipped with a petrol engine are pretty infrequent. 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 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 experience a leak coming from the lower portion 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 Nissan Sentra
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 Nissan Sentra: The different leaks
In the circumstance of leaking diesel injectors on your Nissan Sentra, there are three several types of leaks:
- Leakage from the injector inlet:
In cases like this, it is an inlet pipe that will deform as time passes, commonly the leak will be at the clamping point. - Injector return leakage:
As its name suggests, this leakage concerns the management of the fuel return in the injector, this time the injector that leaks on your Nissan Sentra 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 bothersome, 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 encourage you to consult this content on the presence of oil leaking on your Nissan Sentra.
Leaking injector on my Nissan Sentra, how to fix the leak
And to finish, we’re going to 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 measures:
- Lower the pressure before any work is done…
- 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 very often be limited to replacing the seals that have failed:
- Find the source of the leak
- Dismantle the injector in question
- Change the corresponding seal kit
- Reassemble the set up and tighten with a torque wrench in accordance with the manufacturer’s standards.
In all situations, these interventions are not automatically complex, but if you have the slightest uncertainty in the treatment of your injector that leaks on your Nissan Sentra, we encourage you to get closer to your motor mechanic to avoid any bad handling that could seriously harm the condition of your Nissan Sentra.
If you need more guides on the Nissan Sentra, go to our Nissan Sentra category.
