If you are alert of unusual signs on your car, you are right to be concerned, because a car represents a massive annual budget and sudden breakdowns don’t lower the costs. So what if you feel like you have a leaking injector on your Subaru Forester? You most likely 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 signals of a leaking injector. As this problem can bring about more serious engine concerns on your car, we thought we would write this content page to help you validate the failure of a leaking injector and deal with it correctly. To achieve this, we will first take a look at the case of gasoline injectors and then at those of diesel injectors Subaru Forester.

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Leaking injector on my petrol Subaru Forester

It is crucial to know that the injectors on petrol and diesel engines are different, in fact, the difference in combustion between these two kind 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 Subaru Forester: The different leaks

It should be noted that injector leaks on a Subaru Forester equipped with a petrol engine are rather infrequent. This is due to the much lower pressure in the petrol intake systems. Nevertheless, there are two kind 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 portion 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 experience 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 previously.

Leaking injector on my diesel Subaru Forester

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 Subaru Forester: The different leaks

In the case of leaking diesel injectors on your Subaru Forester, there are three different kind of leaks:

  • Leakage from the injector inlet:
    In this instance, it is an inlet pipe that will deform in the long run, generally 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 Subaru Forester 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 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 checking you have oil leaking but it does not come from your injectors, we suggest you to consult this content page on the existence of oil leaking on your Subaru Forester.

Leaking injector on my Subaru Forester, 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 prior to this, to a worn seal as a result of the pressures suffered. But think that the pressure in the circuit is monumental, specifically on diesel engines. So you will have to take some precautions:

  • Lower the pressure before any work is conducted…
  • 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 very often be limited to replacing the seals that have failed:

  • Identify the source of the leak
  • Take apart the injector in question
  • Replace the corresponding seal kit
  • Reassemble the set up and tighten with a torque wrench in respect with the manufacturer’s standards.

In all cases, these interventions are not specifically complicated, but if you have the tiniest hesitation in the treatment of your injector that leaks on your Subaru Forester, we suggest you to get closer to your motor mechanic to avoid any bad handling that could seriously harm the condition of your Subaru Forester.

To get more tips on the Subaru Forester, take a look at the Subaru Forester category.