96birdlt1

I have just completed a heads and cam swap. Now after starting it up, there is a miss ( sounds like a huge monster cam).

The plugs are almost new, less than 5000 miles and the wires have less than 10000 miles.

I switched the injectors at the same time to some used SVO 30lbs injectors that I bought off a guy on the forum.

I took it to a shop yesterday morning and they couldn't find a vacuum leak anywhere. They started unplugging injector conectors and on the #5 injector the idle did not change. A couple of other injectors made a very small change, but not much.

Are the injectors my problem?
Will this sort of injector test narrow the problem down to just the injector?
Can it be an ignition (plug, wire) problem?

If it is as easy to fix as changing the injectors, I would rather not mess with the plugs as they are difficult to change without unbolting the headers.

Also, the opti is new.

Any help would be awesome,
thanks
Joe

slopokrodrigez

It is very important to check your oil for the smell of gas. There are 3 main reasons a cylinder could be dead. Just as there are 3 things that are required to make any cylinder run correctly. They are fuel, spark and compression. If you don't have one of those things, the cylinder will not ignite. If you smell gas in the oil, you have proved the injector is working and the cylinder is not firing due to either a spark or compression problem. By pulling the injector plug, all that was proved is the cylinder is not functioning. It has not proved the reason as yet.

Assuming the oil smells ok and all the other cylinders are running fine, you eliminated the chance of crossed wires. You need to look at the plug for that cylinder to see if it is firing. I would still swap the plug and wire from another cylinder to see if the problem with that cylinder goes away. If it does not go away, then you can try swapping the injector from another cylinder. If you still have the problem, it's time to check compression but I doubt that's the problem.

Back to the oil in the gas for a second. If you have a dead cylinder but the injector is still firing (that is allowing fuel into the cylinder) that is potentially deadly to your engine block. The fuel in a dead cylinder will wash the oil off the cylinder wall and will eventually lead to scratching of the cylinder wall. Not to mention crank bearing problems in the diluted oil. This problem needs to be fixed before driving anymore. BTW, if you can find it, put the screen back in your MAF.

Hope that helps
Dave

96birdlt1

When I smell the oil, it dosen't smell much different than fresh oil. It smells a little different, but it is much darker as well, leading me to think that the heat changed the smell slightly. If there was gas in the oil, would it be an obvious difference or a slight difference?

Maybe I should have someone with a better nose ( no allergies ) smell it.

Joe

96birdlt1

There has been a new discovery. I pulled up the fuel rail and swaped out the #3 and #5 fuel injectors. At first the idle was rough like it was before, so I pulled off the connector to the #5 injector to see if the injector was bad, and the idle changed showing a live cylinder ( this was the cylinder in question ). I connected it back and removed the #3 connector ( now the injector in question ) and the idle changed. Puzzled, I reconnected the injector and all of a sudden, the idle smothed out, and it idled perfectly.

Now, was the problem a dirty injector connection?
Was it a dirty injector?

Do I need to take all the injectors off and have them professionaly cleaned and tested?

Thanks in advance for any more advice you guys have,

Joe

slopokrodrigez

That is good news. I hope it holds up for you. Based on what you said about the oil not smelling bad. You would have smelled it if it had gas in it. And what else you said about the connectors and the injectors. I would have to believe you may have had a bad connection.

While you have it running good, try wiggling the injector harness in different places to see if you may have a wiring issue.

As far as cleaning goes, you are correct in having the injectors cleaned off the rail and flow matched by a professional. That is the best way to do it. If you have the time and money to do it, that is the way to go. You can also have great sucess in cleaning them on the rail with a professional injector cleaner like 3M makes. It's done by pulling the hose off the FPR and plugging it and pulling the fuel pump relay. Then the engine runs off the can of cleaner until it shuts off. Once it shuts down, it's done.