If you are alert of unusual symptoms on your car, you are right to be concerned, because a car represents a big annual budget and unpredicted malfunctions don’t lower the bill. So what if you feel as if you have a leaking injector on your Tesla Model S? 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 symptoms are the main symptoms of a leaking injector. As this troubles can end up in more significant engine concerns on your car, we chose to produce this article to help you validate the failure of a leaking injector and deal with it properly. To achieve this, we will first of all take a look at the case of gasoline injectors and then at those of diesel injectors Tesla Model S.
Leaking injector on my petrol Tesla Model S
It is important to know that the injectors on petrol and diesel engines are different, actually, the difference in combustion between these two kind 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 Tesla Model S: The different leaks
It should be said that injector leaks on a Tesla Model S equipped with a petrol engine are pretty infrequent. This is due to the much lower pressure in the petrol intake systems. Even so, 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 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 portion of the injector of your car, this one will appear from the junction with the engine and not with the rail as seen sooner.
Leaking injector on my diesel Tesla Model S
Unlike petrol engines, which have spark combustion, diesel engines run on compression. This combustion procedure generates 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 Tesla Model S: The different leaks
In the case of leaking diesel injectors on your Tesla Model S, there are three different kind of leaks:
- Leakage from the injector inlet:
In this case, 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 implies, this leakage relates to the management of the fuel return in the injector, this time the injector that leaks on your Tesla Model S 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 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 checking you have oil leaking but it does not come from your injectors, we encourage you to browse this article on the presence of oil leaking on your Tesla Model S.
Leaking injector on my Tesla Model S, how to fix the leak
And to finish, we’re going to take a look at how to fix a leaking injector on your car. Very often a leak is linked, as we have seen prior to this, to a worn seal as a result of 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 completed…
- Covering you to avoid the risk of fuel spillage
- NEVER work on a running diesel engine injector.
Relating to the repair part of your leak, it will oftentimes be limited to swapping the seals that have failed:
- Discover the source of the leak
- Dismantle the injector in question
- Replace 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 automatically very hard, but if you have the slightest hesitation in the treatment of your injector that leaks on your Tesla Model S, we encourage you to get closer to your auto technician to avoid any bad manipulation that could significantly harm the condition of your Tesla Model S.
If perhaps you have any additional questions about the Tesla Model S, do not hesitate to consult our Tesla Model S category.
