That week I had three injectors fail on the same truck in Detroit

Last month I had a 2015 Freightliner Cascadia come in with a rough idle, and after two days of chasing my tail I found all three injectors on the passenger side had burnt tips. Customer was pissed about the $1800 quote, but I showed him the carbon buildup and he finally agreed to let me replace them all. Anyone else run into a batch of bad injectors like that from a specific fuel supplier?

3 comments

3 Comments

jamie_webb6714d ago

Heard a buddy out in Ohio had a whole pallet of injectors from a certain reman supplier that were ALL garbage, turned out they were mixing in used parts without cleaning them properly. That carbon buildup is the dead giveaway, once you see it you know the fuel quality or the batch is toast.

lewis.mila14d ago

Man that's rough, three at once is a nightmare to diagnose and even worse to explain to the customer. Always the carbon buildup that tells the real story, right?

jakeb8112d ago

Ah man, three injectors at once is brutal but honestly that carbon buildup story isn't quite the smoking gun people think it is. I've seen injectors fail from bad fuel AND from the ECU dumping too much fuel during regen cycles, which leaves the same black crust. Had a 2014 Volvo last spring where the customer swore up and down he only used treated diesel from a major chain, but his injectors looked exactly like yours. Turned out his truck had a faulty crank sensor throwing the timing off, which cooked the tips over a few hundred miles. So yeah, carbon tells you something's wrong but it doesn't always point to the fuel itself.