I want to run solvent through my fuel rail but I noticed that it is buried under the plenum. Has anyone else done this? I figure that removing the plenum may be the only alternative, but after it is removed, the intake is exposed with no throttle-body, MAF, etc. The car needs to run in order to use the solvent. Any ideas or suggestions?

 

uhh. why do you want to run solvent thru your fuel rail? clean the injectors?

you wont get them clean and spraying well that way... only way to really get your injectors clean is to remove them and send them to a injector cleaning place.

 

Well, I'm sure that would be the most effective way. Or I could buy new injectors (expensive!), or I could just run some solvent from one of these kits and see improvement immediatley. I have had great success with this in other cars, but their schrader valves were accessible without removing the plenum. Any ideas?

 

yeah leave it alone! Dump whatever stuff you have in the gas tank and call it a day. BTW no stuff in a can or bottle is gonna clean your injectors like sending them out to be cleaned can.

 

actually, the stuff you put in thru the fuel rail is 10000 times more effective then any gas additive..

im just saying, its not really worth doing it halfway at all... i mean, if its time to clean them, its time to replace the O rings anyway.... and since you have to pull them, might as well clean them right...... (not to say your way is wrong, just the other way is better....



as to how to get to it..... youd probly have to add some kind of extention... like a 45* or a 90* fitting...

 

Its right behind the plenum, where the vaccumn connection for the brake booster is.

 

I'm an idiot. I walked around behind the hood to look at the plenum from the rear and there it is. Easily accessable as you said. As for the "clean or not to clean" debate, I agree that sending the injectors off to be cleaned and matched would be the best bet and I may still do it if the price is right, but the down-time is more of a consideration for me at this point as I need this car to be drivable. I'll check around for price/time. Thanks to everyone for the help.

 

Just checked out Cruzin Performance and lemme tell ya, for $11 an injector, they do a LOT of stuff. I will definitley be doing this as soon as I get some down-time.

 

Cruzin doubled their price?! Crap.. shoulda tracked down my new injectors sooner

Their service is still worth it though..

 

They probably got to much business so they raised the prices to slow down the flow. A buddy does roofing like that. Every year he raises his prices higher n higher just to get some people to go away n wait till next year. Problems is most people still pay.

 

As for down-time, if you can find some 2.8 injectors at a junk yard, you can send those out to be cleaned and then do a swap. I think that's what TomP did but he could only find the 3.1s (right?).

 

Doubled their price? Huh? Two years ago it was $10 an injector. For all that Rich J. does, it's worth it- hell he even pre-installs and pre-lubes the o-rings! (Of course I put extra oil on the o-rings, just to be safe...)

Randon, I actually sent him a set of junkyard injectors, since I couldn't afford the downtime either. I swapped 'em in on a Saturday, no problems. When you take the upper plenum off to get to the rail, replace the upper-plenum-to-lower-plenum gaskets. Just cut your own with an x-acto knife and a $3 roll of thin black gasket material (any pep boys or autozone); use the old gaskets as a template.

Don't remove the throttle body from the plenum; otherwise you'd have to replace that gasket too.

Oh FelPro does make an "upper intake gasket set" that comes with all the new gaskets- but it's $30, because it comes with ALL new gaskets. Not worth it if you're just doing upper plenum work!

 

I recall some years ago it being $5 per injector.. but as I said, I'm not about to argue due to quality of service

 

I picked up my LT1 injectors for $36.30 shipped to my door. It's going to suck spending more to clean them than on the injectors.

 

Actually ya know TS, you might be right, now that I think about it. Weren't there two rates? The cheaper rate was for "just" a cleaning, and it was $10 for the full service - cleaning & flowtesting & blueprinting (if one injector wasn't performing as well as the others, he'd try re-cleaning it to get it up to spec)? I do remember that I paid $10/injector for "the works", just because it was such a bargain.

 

Flow test only, no cleaning, $5.50.