Hey guys,
I’m going to be doing a carbon cleaning in the near future. I see a lot of people recommend replacing their injectors, and was wondering why people do not just clean them? Unless the solenoid failed it seems ridiculous to replace them at $1500 for a set.
My recommendation is pull all the inlet filters. If they all come out 100% intact, just send all of the injectors out for cleaning.
If any are broken apart, replace those injectors and send the ones which were intact out for cleaning.
I have been looking for a reason to buy an injector bench tester. I’ll probably go to a junk yard and pull some injectors.
As emg92 said. Check and pull the filters.
Even if you have to get new injectors send them to get flow tested.
So far it seems unless you’re getting genuine Audi replacement injectors not the generic replacement That the generic units flow worse than the older OEM injectors. So it’s good to get them all flow matched and tested.
What I have done is remove all the leftovers of the original injector filters.
Then with 8bars of pressured air I have forced turpentine through front and back on each injector and cycled with 12v to open and close the solenoid.
The first time I did this I made the mistake of not removing the original filters which was the cause of failed injectors in my case as the plastic on those was brittle and broke off jamming the injectors.
When I say filters, I had no filter materials left so I didn’t notice it to be a filter at first
I went to the junk yard and pulled thirteen injectors. I bought an injector flow tester/cleaner. I also bought a 50pc filter set to replace the old injector filters.
It’s definitely a lot cheaper than buying 10 new injectors. Now I can clean the injectors on my A6 also.
I pulled the filters from the junk yard injectors. They were in rough shape. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the injector issues were caused by the filters falling apart.
https://i.imgur.com/l6bZGWj.jpg
Where did you buy the filters please ? I would like to replace mines too… thanks a lot !
Pretty sure these are the right filters.
6mm X 3mm X 12mm
Thanks a lot! Gonna order them as I will change head gaskets and timing in the coming weeks.
I didn’t install new filters btw.
Straight running commando on this one.
On EBay they have completely stainless steel filters. They look way more robust than the OE ones.
Does “robust” mean a drop in maximum flow performance? Only reason I ask is because I wonder if they spec the filter around a required flow rate, a thicker one may restrict flow?
What I meant by robust was the original filters have a plastic cage. The other ones are all stainless steel mesh. It seem
Like the flow for the stainless steel injectors would be better than the OEM.
Here is a link
I went and ordered some of the stainless filters too. When I get them I’ll do a flow test and see if there is any difference.
I finished my carbon cleaning and injector cleaning.
For the injector filter baskets, there is not any flow difference between the oem plastic filters and the stainless ones. I went ahead and used the stainless filters. My injector basket filters were all extremely clogged or broken. The flow rate on the injectors was horrible and varied. After running them through the injector cleaner several times they all have the same flow within about 2%.
My intake valves had a lot of carbon build up. It had significantly more carbon than my A6 had when I clean its valves. Also I had broken intake flap parts as well. It looks like I will be sourcing a new intake manifold soon.
After the injector cleaning and carbon cleaning, this car performs so much more. It’s definitely a huge difference.
Congrats. Wishing you many maintenance-free miles ahead.
