Changing Injectors.
Discussion
Having removed all my injectors and now waiting for the new O-rings to fix the leak, it just crossed my mind is there any point in changing the injectors for different ones. The chim is a 1998 4Ltr std cam running on the 14cux. Over the winter I intend changing to Megasquirt ao it gives me fule and wasted spark. So If I change the injectors for something else will I notice any difference. Looked through the search and a couple of mentions of using vectra 1.8/2.0 injectors.
Any pintle injector of the correct flow & impedance will be an improvement over the Lucas disc type.
There's a reason why disc type injectors were only ever fitted to a small selection of cars for a relatively short period in the late 80's early 90's.
Only Land Rover persevered with them, you have to ask if they were just supporting the dying Lucas company.
As far as I'm concerned the Vectra injectors have three clear advantages.
1) they are the pintle type
2) They are readily available
3) They are cheap as chips
Why remove & recondition the old Lucas disc type when you can source a set of used Vectra ones and have them reconditioned and flow matched as a set of 8?
I'm not saying the difference will be earth shattering, but that's what I did & it seemed to work well.
Here you can see a Bosch pintle type injector on the left & a Lucas disc type as fitted to the Chimaera on the right.
Here is a high speed shot, this time the pintle type is on the right & the Lucas on the left.
Forget the spray pattern differences for a minute, in the high speed shot you can clearly see the less than ideal large droplets produced by the two Lucas disc type injectors.
Actually the Vectra pintle type injectors are designed to give a split stream spray pattern (see below), this split spray pattern seems to make little or no difference in the Rover V8.
The bottom line is any pintle injector (whatever the spary pattern) will perform better than the best disc type injector.
That's why pretty much every car manufacturer switched to pintle type injectors by the mid 90's while at the same time disc type injectors were relegated to the history books.
There's a reason why disc type injectors were only ever fitted to a small selection of cars for a relatively short period in the late 80's early 90's.
Only Land Rover persevered with them, you have to ask if they were just supporting the dying Lucas company.
As far as I'm concerned the Vectra injectors have three clear advantages.
1) they are the pintle type
2) They are readily available
3) They are cheap as chips
Why remove & recondition the old Lucas disc type when you can source a set of used Vectra ones and have them reconditioned and flow matched as a set of 8?
I'm not saying the difference will be earth shattering, but that's what I did & it seemed to work well.
Here you can see a Bosch pintle type injector on the left & a Lucas disc type as fitted to the Chimaera on the right.
Here is a high speed shot, this time the pintle type is on the right & the Lucas on the left.
Forget the spray pattern differences for a minute, in the high speed shot you can clearly see the less than ideal large droplets produced by the two Lucas disc type injectors.
Actually the Vectra pintle type injectors are designed to give a split stream spray pattern (see below), this split spray pattern seems to make little or no difference in the Rover V8.
The bottom line is any pintle injector (whatever the spary pattern) will perform better than the best disc type injector.
That's why pretty much every car manufacturer switched to pintle type injectors by the mid 90's while at the same time disc type injectors were relegated to the history books.
ChimpanLucky said:
Any pintle injector of the correct flow & impedance will be an improvement over the Lucas disc type.
As far as I'm concerned the Vectra injectors have three clear advantages.
1) they are the pintle type
2) They are readily available
3) They are cheap as chips
Why remove & recondition the old Lucas disc type when you can source a set of used Vectra ones and have them reconditioned and flow matched as a set of 8?
So what Vectra ones are a direct replacement for the Lucas ones ?As far as I'm concerned the Vectra injectors have three clear advantages.
1) they are the pintle type
2) They are readily available
3) They are cheap as chips
Why remove & recondition the old Lucas disc type when you can source a set of used Vectra ones and have them reconditioned and flow matched as a set of 8?
Are the same injectors fitted to the 4, 4.5 and 5 Ltr engines ?
Pink_Floyd said:
So what Vectra ones are a direct replacement for the Lucas ones ?
Are the same injectors fitted to the 4, 4.5 and 5 Ltr engines ?
Details & full spec here:Are the same injectors fitted to the 4, 4.5 and 5 Ltr engines ?
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=110...
Pink_Floyd said:
Having removed all my injectors and now waiting for the new O-rings to fix the leak, it just crossed my mind is there any point in changing the injectors for different ones. The chim is a 1998 4Ltr std cam running on the 14cux. Over the winter I intend changing to Megasquirt ao it gives me fule and wasted spark. So If I change the injectors for something else will I notice any difference. Looked through the search and a couple of mentions of using vectra 1.8/2.0 injectors.
If your going over to an MS then I would fit new ones at that point, and I would go for slightly larger injectors as well (depending on your engine size). No point fitting the same size as you will probably find the original size are close to the limit as other people have.I wouldnt fit another type unless you intend to get the 14CUX re-mapped as they will not work well straight out of the box, the mixture will be different all over the place. The 14CUX may cope with this reasonably well as it uses a MAF, but it still wont give you good results,
Phil
Haven't got round to it yet, but when I upgrade from Fuel only megasquirt to wasted spark, I plan on Upgrading the Injectors and thought the Vauxhall ones may do the job.
Based on the thread above and a conversion factor of 1lb/hr = 10.5cc/min:-
The Original Injector capacity is 200cc/min = 19lb/hr
The Vauxhall injector capacity is 250 cc/min = 24lb/hr. which is a 20% increase.
Anyone confirm if these numbers are correct as I thought the original injectors had a higher capacity.
Based on the thread above and a conversion factor of 1lb/hr = 10.5cc/min:-
The Original Injector capacity is 200cc/min = 19lb/hr
The Vauxhall injector capacity is 250 cc/min = 24lb/hr. which is a 20% increase.
Anyone confirm if these numbers are correct as I thought the original injectors had a higher capacity.
angus99 said:
Haven't got round to it yet, but when I upgrade from Fuel only megasquirt to wasted spark, I plan on Upgrading the Injectors and thought the Vauxhall ones may do the job.
Based on the thread above and a conversion factor of 1lb/hr = 10.5cc/min:-
The Original Injector capacity is 200cc/min = 19lb/hr
The Vauxhall injector capacity is 250 cc/min = 24lb/hr. which is a 20% increase.
Anyone confirm if these numbers are correct as I thought the original injectors had a higher capacity.
Sounds about right, although I seem to remember the stock Hotwire/Sagem(not Lucas as people presume)inj's being around 185/195cc at stock pressure Based on the thread above and a conversion factor of 1lb/hr = 10.5cc/min:-
The Original Injector capacity is 200cc/min = 19lb/hr
The Vauxhall injector capacity is 250 cc/min = 24lb/hr. which is a 20% increase.
Anyone confirm if these numbers are correct as I thought the original injectors had a higher capacity.
Simon says said:
angus99 said:
Haven't got round to it yet, but when I upgrade from Fuel only megasquirt to wasted spark, I plan on Upgrading the Injectors and thought the Vauxhall ones may do the job.
Based on the thread above and a conversion factor of 1lb/hr = 10.5cc/min:-
The Original Injector capacity is 200cc/min = 19lb/hr
The Vauxhall injector capacity is 250 cc/min = 24lb/hr. which is a 20% increase.
Anyone confirm if these numbers are correct as I thought the original injectors had a higher capacity.
Sounds about right, although I seem to remember the stock Hotwire/Sagem(not Lucas as people presume)inj's being around 185/195cc at stock pressure Based on the thread above and a conversion factor of 1lb/hr = 10.5cc/min:-
The Original Injector capacity is 200cc/min = 19lb/hr
The Vauxhall injector capacity is 250 cc/min = 24lb/hr. which is a 20% increase.
Anyone confirm if these numbers are correct as I thought the original injectors had a higher capacity.
All I can tell you is I threw a set of reconditioned & flow matched Vectra injectors in my Chim and it solved a few issues for me.
They removed the small amount black smoke I was getting on full throttle & helped a little bit with the over rich idle.
This may have been down to nothing more than the fact my Vectra injectors were nicely reconditioned, perhaps reconditioning the Lucas ones would have had the same effect.
Don't expect miracles from the Vectra injectors, it wasn't like they gave me an extra 5mpg or anything, my car does run nice on them though.
If you are going to the expense of fitting a MegaSquirt system it would seem to make sense to fit new injectors that have ample capacity.
However if you are sticking with the old 14CUX system and want a set of decent injectors, the Vectra ones work well.
I got the Vectra ones reconditioned while still running the Lucas ones, so it was a simple Saturday morning swap over with no car down time to speak of.
If you compare the cost of used Lucas injectors with used Vectra ones you will see the Vectra ones are normally a lot cheaper, probably because they are so common.
TBH that was another reason I went for them.
I still say the best improvements I have made to power, throttle response & idle quality was when I removed all the cats & fitted an ACT Y piece plus a set of iridium plugs.
It wasn't the Vectra injectors that made the difference, but perhaps now she breaths better and the fuel is being burnt better, the Vectra injectors are coming into their own.
Finally, please remember most of my little mods are done on the cheap because I am cheap
If I could justify the cost of new injectors and a proper mapped spark that's exactly what I would do.
900T-R said:
Small point - the Lucas injectors are rated at 2.5 bar fuel pressure (185 cc per minute) while the Vauxhall ones are rated 250 cc per minute at 3.0 bar.
I did quote the figures in the above link.The info I was given by my injector specialist was that the Lucas ones flow 200cc @ 3.0 bar, this came straight from his extensive & trusted reference library.
Like I say, if you look into into it there seems to be quite a lot of conflicting information out there (from normally trustworthy sources) on the flow rate of our Lucas injectors.
I didn't exactly just throw a set of Vectra injectors in blindly, I actually did quite a bit of research on the differences before I took the plunge.
This included speaking at length with my injector specialist to gauge his opinion on the effects on moving from Lucas to the Vectra injectors.
The consensus was that the impedance would be the most critical element that would govern their potential for success in my 4.0 litre Rover V8 (or not), & that the impedance difference between the two types of injectors was so small it should not be considered an issue.
Vectra (Seimans): High (14.2 – 15.3 Ohm)
Lucas: High (16.2 Ohm)
It was concluded that at worse the Vectra injectors that flow 250cc @ 3.0 bar and have an impedance range of 14.2 – 15.3 Ohms would possibly break very slightly earlier, stay open a fraction longer and flow a tiny bit more fuel.
I was advised that the risk overfuelling was minimal & that the ECU via Lambda input could keep the engine within an efficient AFR range.
Since fitting the Vectra injectors the car has been on the rollers with Mark Adams, we pulled two of the injectors (one from each bank) and flow tested them.
These two randomly pulled injectors flowed within 1% of each other, Mark seemed impressed & commented the spray pattern and flow matched accuracy was far better than the Lucas ones could ever hope to deliver.
The AFR readings on the rolling road graph were also spot on.
Finally, away from the rollers and back in the real world, running on the Vectra injectors my Chim idles nicely, pulls well and consistently delivers over 28mpg on a run.
All this leads me to conclude my Vectra injectors can't be that far out.
Mind you compared with the Lucas ones, they tick like an early Griffith clock
Pink_Floyd said:
Thanks to all for your comments and knowledge. I'll be putting the old injectors back in for now and will get some vectra ones (90501588) for the winter ready for the Megasquirt.
After running some datalogs and sending them to the megasquirt Guru ,he found the original lucas injectors were flat out at 5000rpm.This means no more fuel available .
I noticed the difference straight on the strip,made 12.6 on the second go just before the clutch gave in.
Thats with joke tyres
Those Fiveo`s Gen 111`s are very good injectors and can be picked up second hand.
Pink_Floyd said:
Thanks to all for your comments and knowledge. I'll be putting the old injectors back in for now and will get some vectra ones (90501588) for the winter ready for the Megasquirt.
Good choice, as said already you can't beat a bit of later technology even if you dont intend to max out the original older Lucas/Sagems.You can also use Bosch Gen 11 that have the groove for the circlip in them as per original Lucas type (Gen 111 don't) or my favourite, the yellow top Ford Motorsport C302 as fitted to 4.6/5.0 Mustangs.
http://www.mustangsunlimited.com/itemdy00.asp?T1=M...
http://www.mustangsunlimited.com/itemdy00.asp?T1=M...
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