Injector Replacement and EGR Clean - 2003 KDJR120

[Sam]

Differences and gotchas etc. continued ...

Glow Plug Bar
You might be able to see in some of the pictures that our glow plug connector strip thing was in a real rusty state. We knew we wouldn't know how bad it really was until we were in there - and that we wouldn't really really be able to tell until the fuel lines were off. I thought that would be too far into the job to stop and go and get a new connector if we needed one, so we bought one with all the other parts and had it to hand just in case.

In the end it really was a mess but I don't think it was actually *necessary* to change it. It had long been without it's paint and was very, very rusty - but they are actually much thicker and sturdier than I expected. We changed it because we had it - but I wouldn't be losing sleep if we hadn't. Not sure if that helps anyone

To fit, it was very easy. Everything was pretty much finger tight. The cream caps just screw off by hand and the *tiny* nuts are very loose. They don't need to come off all the way. We just loosened them a little and let the connector hooks slide out. Of course the wiring at the end into the loom needs to come off but that's probably already been done if you've removed the EGR.

If I have any tips here it's this ... the little tiny nuts are on little tiny threads - and I mean tiny. I'm confident the torque spec, if they even have one, is about zero newton meters. That's approx. zero foot pounds. In fact whatever your measurement of choice, it's about zero. Those threads are tiny. I'm sure they will snap if you cough near them. I went to *just* past finger tight. Of course, don't listen to me - they might actually have a torque spec and a reason to use it

 

[Sam]

Differences and gotchas etc. continued ...

Valve cover
Next we got the valve cover off. This was pretty straight forward but there are some gotchas to look out for.

More than anythng we kept in mind that the cover is just plastic and so could be cracked quite easily. There's also a recommended way of re-fitting the cover as far as bolt sequence goes to avoid cracking it, so we did that in reverse. Mostly though we just followed the good spannner practice of undoing all bolts as a set - a little at a time on each bolt - to make sure things came off evenly and not stressed. You'll probably need a union joint to get to the bolts at the back.

I think it was 10 bolts and 2 nuts in total. The nut on the left was a little tricky to get a 1/4 ratchet on because it sits next to a bracket but not too much hassle. It was clearly going to be a drop hazard when refitting though, so when I came to it I squidged a glob of grease into the socket head to hold the nut when I guided the ratchet down to the stud to screw it back on. Worked for me

Make sure you take the rubber injector nozzle holder seals out BEFORE you try to take the cover off (the ones where the fuel pipes connected). They will shed a lot of dirt and gunk straight down onto your injectors. If you're not replacing them this will probably ruin your day. Not sure what you're supposed to do to avoid that - but it's not listen to me.

The cover has a few little blobs of RTV at the front under the seal. We GENTLY pried the front right corner up a tiny bit to help break that seal - but gently gently and only a little bit. The cover is only plastic and can crack pretty easily.

We found it easiest to grab the cover with two hands on its hump and gently wiggle it a little bit forwards, backwards and upwards until it slowly came free enough to lift it up over the injectors and out.

We didn't have to worry too much about the top seals in the cover because we had new ones to put back in but it would be very easy to damage or tear them when the cover is lifted over the injector heads. If you're not replacing the seals you'll have to be very gentle and move slowly. There's not a lot of room between the head and the wiring loom and it's pretty easy to take your eye off of the cover to look for a way out and catch an injector. I did a couple of times anyway.

No other tips really. Have somewhere prepared to put the cover before you take it off. It's oily and messy. We put it straight into a plastic "really useful" storage box ready to be cleaned.

The gasket was old and hard as I had suspected which was actually good to see. It would at least explain the weep of oil from all around the cover.

I don't know what you're supposed to use to clean the cover but we used warm water, fairy washing up liquid and some gentle brushes. I will warn anyone doing this that the oily fumes from the cover are more than you might expect during and even after washing it. It's quite a lot. We then made sure it was thouroughly rinsed and totally clean and gave it plenty of time to properly dry (over night). I gave it a good blow out with a hair dryer before it went back on too just to be sure. You really don't want breathe that fumey hairdryer air either!

 

[Sam]

Differences and gotchas etc. continued ...

Injectors
I think I've probably covered off the differences with these injectors earlier in the post so I'll skip that here and jump straight to the good bits.

Can't really carry on without the obligatory shot with the cover off though ...

First we removed the gold fuel return line (wobble bar). After all the talk about the size of the bolts on this, I found a totally different set of "bolts" on mine. Still 17mm but far from the bolt shape I expected. I quite like them

The little silver gaskets on these bolts don't always survive installation. That means when undone, bits of gasket can end up laying around or falling into the head. We took extra care to examine them before undoing the bolts to see which ones had broken and was glad we did. Even though we couldn't see it, the one at the back (that bolts into the head) had broken and left a big bit of gasket behind. If we hadn't been careful to lift the assembly straight upwards we would have knocked it into the head for sure - and maybe not known about it. be carefult here - and maybe examine the bar, bolts and gaskets once it's all off and make sure you've got everything you expect to have.

Once that was off, getting the injectors out was easy. We undid and removed all of the clamps and then followed a simple routine for each injector one by one. We were glad we prepared somewhere to put the injectors as we took them out because they were a real mess (dripping a lot of oil).

As we took each one out with one hand they went straight onto a rag in the other (to catch the dripping oil and so we could get them flat and see the state of them in terms of blow-by etc) and then stright into the box. We then quickly had a look down into the injector port to see how much oil was down there. Because our o-rings had failed there was a lot of oil all the way down the injectors so we quickly got "woody" wrapped in a rag down into the hole to stop as much as possible going all the way in. Repeat x 4.

All four injectors were a mess and three of them had the seat welded to the end. No. 4 left the seat in the hole though ... slightly worrying shade I thought

Then came the first bit of ...... fun ...

Once we'd sent Woody in to clean up the hole a bit I was happy enough to get the pick set out to retireve the seat. It took a few goes because I couldn't see into the port (being No.4 at the back) but eventually I felt like I had it on the hook ... so slowly I raised it up ... carefully ... nearly at the top .... slooooowly ..... plink!

The first arrow is where one would like to see an innjector seat, where it lives in the injector port. The second arrow is not. This is in the head. Out of sight. Out of reach!
Took a little while this one but after much giggling, many pictures and videos on our phones and a lot of blind puggling, we eventuntually managed to "knock" it into view as this picture shows. All luck and very little judgement.

Once I could see it, it was just a case of gently nudging it towards us a few microns at a time before trying to get it back onto the pick that it had just jumped itself off of. Once on, after the panic laughing had calmed, we raised it up and out with ceremony not unlike the rasing of the Mary Rose.

First daft mistake survived. Just goes to show though that although you really don't want to drop anything into the head - it's not necessarily the end of the world. Until you know that it's a bit of a worry. That was the first of 4 things in total - all retrieved eventually though.

Next it was just hours of cleaning the injector ports using our length of wooden dowel we named Woody, wrapped in rags. This one was about half done. Most of the internal marks you can see are just reflections of us bouncing around but there are still rings at the bottom that we wanted gone. What a boring job. Put a self tapping screw in the end of your dowel and use a screwdriver gun to do it. You'll be spinning sticks in your palms for the rest of your life otherwise. It took a good couple of hours even with a screwdriver gun.

Once we'd cleaned all the ports it was on to valve clearance checks.