In cases where you are informed of abnormal symptoms on your vehicle, you are right to be intrigued, because a car represents a big annual budget and surprising breakdowns don’t lower the expenses. So what if you find that you have a leaking injector on your Toyota Rav 4? 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 manifestations are the main symptoms of a leaking injector. As this failure can end up in more severe engine problems on your car, we decided to compose this article to help you ensure the failure of a leaking injector and deal with it properly. To accomplish this, we will initially look at the case of gasoline injectors and then at those of diesel injectors Toyota Rav 4.

leaking-injector-toyota-rav-4

Leaking injector on my petrol Toyota Rav 4

It is fundamental to know that the injectors on petrol and diesel engines are different, in reality, the difference in combustion between these two kind of engines makes the injection different. The essential 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 Toyota Rav 4: The different leaks

It should be mentioned that injector leaks on a Toyota Rav 4 equipped with a petrol engine are pretty infrequent. This is resulting from 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 possible 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:
    Finally, you may encounter a leak coming from the lower part 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 Toyota Rav 4

Unlike petrol engines, which have spark combustion, diesel engines run on compression. This combustion procedure 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 Toyota Rav 4: The different leaks

In the case of leaking diesel injectors on your Toyota Rav 4, there are three different kind of leaks:

  • Leakage from the injector inlet:
    In cases like this, it is an inlet pipe that will deform in the long run, commonly the leak will be at the clamping point.
  • Injector return leakage:
    As its name suggests, this leakage relates to the management of the fuel return in the injector, this time the injector that leaks on your Toyota Rav 4 will be caused by an O-ring or its plastic tip that leaks.
  • Injector base leak:
    This injection leak is one of the most troublesome, 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 recommend you to consult this article on the existence of oil leaking on your Toyota Rav 4.

Leaking injector on my Toyota Rav 4, how to fix the leak

And at last, we’re going to look at how to fix a leaking injector on your car. Regularly a leak is connected, 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, especially on diesel engines. So you will have to take some safety 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.

Relating to the repair part of your leak, it will very often be limited to swapping the seals that have failed:

  • Find the source of the leak
  • Take apart the injector in question
  • Change 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 automatically difficult, but if you have the slightest hesitation in the treatment of your injector that leaks on your Toyota Rav 4, we recommend you to get closer to your mechanic to avoid any bad handling that could significantly harm the condition of your Toyota Rav 4.

If you want more tutorials on the Toyota Rav 4, go to our Toyota Rav 4 category.