Expert view: The real culprit behind diesel injector failures

I have seen customers from Mahindra, Tata, Ashok Leyland, VW, Ford, Mercedes Benz (Heavy Vehicles) coming with failed injectors and fuel pumps in less than 6 months of vehicle purchase.

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I can so much relate to all the people here. I know that a lot of forum members have really in-depth knowledge, but I will slightly beg to differ here for brand-specific failures, I have seen this failure in almost every make and model of diesel engine vehicles that are sold in Manipur. Reason -- Fuel. I will come to this in detail later in this post.

My father owns (used to, he decided to retire this Jan 22) a moderate Fuel Injector Servicing centre. When I was a kid, during school days, I use to spend my summer vacations taking apart the Peugeot and Lucas Delphi fuel injector, replacing the parts which needed replacement before they were taken for calibration which my dad used to take care of. Attaching the setup for reference. Please bear the photos they were never taken from a perspective to be shared.

This one is as far as I remember is a German-made machine, I will ask for more details if anyone is interested, purely used for Injectors calibration. Select the vehicle make and model and it will do the rest, plus you have an option to overclock them as well as we can do with the graphics card. This is purely for underload and overload conditions to save on fuel or get the extra power by delivering extra fuel to the combustion chamber.

Unfortunately, I only have the side photo of this, will try to get more coverage of this one. This one was not connected when I visited last time, but this is for Euro 6/BS6. This can calibrate 4 injectors or more I don't know the exact details at one considerably reducing the time compared to the one above which can do one at a time taking 15 mins.

One of the oldest machines, the beginning of everything for this service centre. If my dad has the photo of the first one I will share that across as well.

Again one of the new arrivals for new generations engines, this is mostly used for calibrating heavy custom machinery running 6-12 cylinders. I never had the opportunity to see a 12 cylinder fuel pump but I have seen 8 and 10 cylinder fuel pumps

Side view of the 6-12 cylinder machine

Work in progress during covid

The reason I posted the above is, I am not talking without seeing the reality. I have seen one of the biggest (high torque) engines as well as a few fast ones (VW TDI) vehicles who have come to us. We service all kinds of diesel injectors and fuel pumps, small capacity to the largest one we have ever seen. I have also seen customers from Mahindra, Tata, Eicher, Man, Ashok Leyland, VW, Ford, Mercedes Benz (Heavy Vehicles) coming with failed injectors and fuel pumps in less than 6 months of vehicle purchase. Why they come to us is ASS charge them a bomb and we do the same stuff with genuine spares for much lesser.

Coming back to the original problem why exactly they face the issue, one simple answer is bad fuel. Manipur bunks are notorious for selling adulterated fuel, nothing much you can do about it. We have top-level bureaucrats as well as politicians as customers. Good for business but bad for vehicle owners.

My dad was surprised when he had this conversation with a cab driver in Siliguri driving a diesel Ertiga that had crossed 3L km and he never had to service the injector or the fuel pump. The max my dad has seen is a 2012 manufactured Tata 1613 truck that had clocked 120xxx km in recent times. 30 years back, a truck use to come back in 2-3 years after clocking a few lakhs km, now they come back in thousands of km. Also, he was totally against me buying a diesel vehicle, since he has seen the horror of the customer first hand, I too grew up seeing that but somehow, I convinced myself saying the fuel outside NorthEast can't be so bad. Took a bet to let's see how it plays out.

There are a lot of things but I am keeping it brief, please ask any queries if you have, I will try my best to answer them, I do know a thing or two about injectors and fuel pumps

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