One of my injectors, specifically, the driver's side rear most one has a leak.

The leak is between the tube that comes from the Injection Pump to the injector and the flare nut.

It's as if the flare isn't mating with the injector all of a sudden... Which is odd because it was torqued down pretty well and this just started.

I can see little puffs of diesel mist spraying up when the engine runs.

I drew a pic, but I can't attach it.

 

Upload your pictures to your gallery first, then you can post them in your reply.

With that much fuel squirting out of the connection it should cause a significant misfire. Its also possible that after all this time the fuel has eroded the surfaces of the connection. Worst case scenario you have to replace the injector and injector line.

 

Would it make sense to replace the rest of the injectors if I do this one?

Truck has unknown mileage as it's a 5 digit odometer. Previous owner said it's also a replaced engine.


Would injectors and glow plugs (I know the plugs are shot as it rarely, if ever starts without a shot of ether spray and the glow plug relay clicks once a sec when I turn the key on.) be an afternoon job, or am I looking at booking up a weekend on this?

 

Its really up to you if you want to replace the other injectors or not. Its not mandatory, but if you can afford it, than it would be better to do them all unless you know that the set is still fairly new. Get new ones not rebuilt.

Replacing all the injectors and glow plugs can be done in an afternoon, but you have to be careful when replacing glow plugs that are known to be bad.

First of all, only use Beru/motorcraft brand. To pull the old plugs, its best of bring each piston to top the top of the compression stroke so that if a tip breaks off, it can't fall into the cylinder and will stay in the prechamber where a vacuum cleaner can still reach it (the tips are not magnetic).

The injectors are pretty easy to replace. If possible blast the area around the injector with compressed air before removing them to keep crud from getting into the chamber (same for the glow plugs). also make sure the copper washer comes out with the injector.


Before replacing anything you should try to post some photos here so we can get a better idea of what is happening. It could also be a cracked injector line depending on where the leak is. In that case a new line would be all you need.

And if you must use starter fluid disable the glowplugs first. But put it to you this way, I will never use it on my truck. I've seen upper compression rings break in half from the use of either in a diesel.

 

I just priced them at $35 a pop. PLUS the $60 O-Ring kit, I think I'll only be doing the one.

I have a whole set of eight glow plugs that've been sitting in the glovebox since last year. I did get the Motorcraft/Beru ones; They do say Made in Germany on them.

I've just been a little leery of replacing them because I've heard that the head needs to be removed if I damage one.


I pulled the injector line and it looks good. I put another one on just to check. It's from a spare injection pump with a set of lines that I found in the back when I got the truck.

It leaks muck more and I can feel the miss.

The original line I couldn't feel/hear the miss easily.



What would cause this problem? Do the flares on injectors just all of a sudden go bad?



When turning the engine, I know I'll need a 1/2" drive breaker bar. What size socket and how do I know which cylinder is at TDC?
I'm used to Gas engines where I can look at the distributor to find out who's at TDC.

 

Is there any damage to the threads of the injector itself? it is possible that a slight leak eroded the steel in the connector enough that it will leak no matter how tight the connection is now. Where exactly is the leak on the line? Taking a magnifyer to the injector with the line off may yeild some clues as to what happened. Also take a very close look at the line as well. It doesn't take much to alow a leak when the lines have ~2000 psi in them.

This doesn't normally happen. My truck has 400 000 kilometers on it and all the injector lines are original and still peeling grey paint off to this day.

Since you tried a different line its probably a fault with the injector itself. To really prove this you can swap this injector with another one
and see if the leak follows the injector to its new home.


The socket you need to turn the engine is a 15/16" and a 3" extention. This page has a very good write up on how to get each piston to TDC and also has good info on safely removing glow plug tips:

"Glow plug removal article"

 

It's like this:



Obviously, the Red is the injector, the Blue is the line and the Green is the flare nut.

Black is where it sprays out.

 

Under normal conditions I would say there is a crack in the line right where it flares out.

But if you changed lines, and it is still leaking in the same place, I don't know what to say.

Are you positive the fuel is not landing there from a leak in another line, like the cylinder in front of that one?

 

Only thing to make sure that the injector is at fault is to move the leaking injector to a new location on a different cylinder to see if the leak follows the injector to the new location.

 

in addition to above mentions here is another approach ive used to get out of a corner. cut a 3/16 in. long peice of 1/4 copper tubing with t cutter. place in flare block & make a flare washer, install. it wont fix a cracked line or a damaged line seat however it is softer then steel to steel & might fill the gap. regards butch

 

Positive. The most fuel is in that location and there is some on the air cleaner housing as well as the bottom of the windshield wiper motor.

I also observed air bubbles come out of that location when I cranked it with a little fuel sitting on top of the nut but with the cutoff solenoid disconnected. (After having removed the line to inspect the flare and injector.)

I'll try that and report back.

Interesting idea. I think I have some copper. It'll save me on injectors until I either need to or feel like replacing all of them.




Thank you all so very much. Happy 4th all.

Hopefully I can get this running without causing fireworks of my own.

 

is it possible that the plastic return fitting that goes around the injector, with rubber o-rings is leaking? Just a thought. Had to do mine.

I have never had a problem changing glow plugs, but I am glad I read the article from David85. Glow plugs can be check, in vehicle with an ohm meter. The lower the ohms, the better, close to zero but someone else probably knows the exact specs. My wait light was going out too fast so I replaced all my glow plugs, but only 3 were bad. Started better.

But really what improved my starting was a new starter. I figured the starter was going but I got towed home before I had a chance to take it apart. With the new starter and good batteries and glow plugs, after the wait light goes out, it starts as fast as a car. I suspected that the starter was going because I was losing the settings on my radio, even after cleaning the battery terminals and my cables were new last year.

 

Engine compartment fireworks are usually not good, 4th of July or not.

If the bubbles were on top of the nut, the return line O rings are not the problem.

You could try to loosen the nut, then move the line slightly as you retighten the nut.
That could help the line seat better, but since it just started leaking while driving, that might not help.

I don't think I have ever seen a leak there just start.
After changing injectors or O rings, yes if the lines were not seated when replaced.

 

Well, my problem was multifold...

1.) Line was crossthreaded on the injector. Not sure if it was like this or I did it... Luckily, the injector is softer than the flare nut. I'd hate to find out how expensive a set of lines for this antique are from the Ford dealer.

2.) The flare part of the line is messed up from being tightened down too hard. There is a dent in the spare that I had as well...

3.) The vibration dampener brackets that bolt to three lines are missing from that side of the engine's injector lines.


When I got a new injector, I put it in and it worked but I still got a little seepage.

Sandpaper made the flare smooth again, and I put one of the vibration dampeners from my spare set of lines on it. Works OK now... I hope it stays that way.

 

"After having removed the line to inspect the flare and injector.)"

I over torqued an M-B inj. lin eflare nut and caused it to leak.
Looking closely at th einj. line seat, I could see it was distorted, and no longer circular, but oblong. Neede to replace inj. body and line.