Is this the price for Direct Injection?

[Fredbear]

Just had a roadside breakdown when the injectors on no 1 and 2 cylinders failed putting the car onto 2 cylinders with black smoke belching out the exhaust and a strong smell of unburnt fuel from the exhaust. Car is a 4 year old BMW 320i with 27000 miles on the clock. Towed to local BMW dealer and although outside manufacturers warranty I had taken out a used car warranty that covered it but still had a £250 excess to pay. Thought that when I bought the car I would get at least 5 years and probably 100000 miles before any major outlay from a quality German brand.
Previous cars from Ford and Peugeot went on to clock up over 180000 miles with only routine maintenance required but they were port injection- so are we going to pay the price for better fuel efficiency for a while yet until this new technology is sorted?
I requested the catalytic converter be replaced as the fuel would have poisoned the Cat but I knew they would not agree to this under the warranty. I also asked that the oil be drained as it would be diluted with petrol but they would n't agree to this so I will be doing this myself as a precaution.
Anyone else had problems with failed injectors on fairly new direct injection engines?

 

[Silverado12]

FWIW wife has a 2012 Chevy Equinox with 46,000 miles on a D.I. 2.4 four cylinder w/o any problems. BMW is not known to be the most reliable car out there and they cost a fortune to fix.

 

[Dyusik]

How can you blame DI for a failed injector? It's like blaming the mail truck for getting you a DUI. BMW degraded in quality, simple. I have not seen a BMW that had ~150K on it and ONLY maintenance done to it, something somewhere failed. My buddy had an 89 318i, and he was the 7th or 9th generation molester that the car saw, sold running better than my 530i was at half the mileage and better care. Don't get me wrong, I loved my E39, I just (and will) never trusted the car. BMW reliability is a thing of the past as far as I'm concerned.

I'm at 72k with just fluid changes and a rear brake pad swap.

 

[Rand]

Doesn't sound like a typical DI problem.

Typical DI issues usually are related to intake deposits because the fuel doesnt wash over the valves like port injection.

 

[Virtus_Probi]

Have over 42k on my DIT engine with no huge problems yet.

Seems very odd to me offhand that two injectors would fail at once, is there any commonality between them that would not be obvious to someone unskilled in autos like me? Sorry that you had trouble with such low miles on your vehicle.

 

[Trav]

I have been seeing a lot of DI injectors over the past year, previously it was mostly marine DI like the Yamaha, Mercury optimax hybrids and Evinrude E-tec units but now the cars are getting up in miles they are coming in.
I have done 4 sets of Mazda Speed 6 injectors in the last month, the were in terrible shape, loaded with carbon, burnt filters in 2 of the sets (no idea why), clogging, bad spray pattern.
No electrical failures just heat and carbon issues.

 

[hypervish]

I laughed when i read you expected 100k trouble-free miles from a BMW. Maybe 10k miles.... but 100k, yeah right!

But agreed with the others, can't blame this one on DI. Carbon buildup is the major issue associated with DI, unless it is accompanied by port injection.

 

[OneEyeJack]

Are GDI injectors different, run at higher pressures and have more precision nozzles? Are they under more stress because they're in the combustion chamber? It appears that they run in a different environment than previous injectors that lived in a cooler intake stream.

This GDI stuff looks like a completely different game. This setup may promote meeting new government requirements but without some serious upgrades in engineering, materials and methods I'd be willing to bet it's not working out so far for reliability when it comes to higher mileage.

 

[440Magnum]

How can you guys who are saying "can't blame DI for a bad injector" really say that with such a blanket certainty? A DI injector operates in a COMPLETELY different regime than an intake-port mounted injector. Its exposed to pressures and temperatures that port injectors will never approach.

I'm not saying that the injectors ARE to blame (when two go at once, I'm far more inclined to blame driver circuitry in the PCM), but I'm a little shocked you think DI injectors are in any way assured to fail at the same rates and in the same ways as port injectors. Different animals.

 

[Bgallagher]

Originally Posted By: Silverado12
FWIW wife has a 2012 Chevy Equinox with 46,000 miles on a D.I. 2.4 four cylinder w/o any problems. BMW is not known to be the most reliable car out there and they cost a fortune to fix.


I got the same engine in my Terrain. Nice little engine.

As mentioned in a previous post. it sounds like another issue and not a DI.

 

[KrisZ]

Looks like injector cleaning and balancing could be the DI "thing". Similar to diesel applications.

 

[Leo99]

Funny to blame DI and not BMW. You want trouble free miles, buy a Toyota.

 

[DoubleWasp]

Marine GDI and road DDI learned the hard way that those injectors require some serious quality in engineering, construction, fuel quality, and filtering to survive.

The E-ticket for our Cummins engines is 2-micron fuel filters, OTR water trap, and TCW3 in the tank.

I run TCW3 in all of GDI vehicles as well.

But was this a GDI issue? Maybe not that so much as an issue for whoever manufactured those specific injectors.

 

[Nick1994]

Originally Posted By: Silverado12
FWIW wife has a 2012 Chevy Equinox with 46,000 miles on a D.I. 2.4 four cylinder w/o any problems. BMW is not known to be the most reliable car out there and they cost a fortune to fix.
+1

 

[PandaBear]

Your CAT is fine, excess fuel will not poison the cat, burning a lot of engine oil, coolant leak, etc will.

You also don't need to flush the fuel tank, that has nothing to do with direct injection related problem. You only do that if diesel get in to a gasoline car's tank.

DI injectors do not see a significant failure rate over port injection; they see a lot of carbon build up on intake valves and fuel in engine oil, that's about it.

 

[RoadRaceJosh]

The catalytic converter didn't necessarily suffer damage. You'll know soon enough by the presence or absence of a MIL.

Regarding fuel in the oil: I would have asked that a used oil analysis be done to show that the oil was still serviceable.

 

[wemay]

Sorry to hear OP. Hopefully they get to the bottom of it and get it fixed soon. Once they do, (not that you haven't already been taking care of the vehicle) use the best fuels you can, Top Tier here in the U.S., throw a bottle of complete fuel system cleaner in the fuel tank every oil change (lot's of detractors of this since the fuel doesn't spray the back of the valves but in actuality, it's for cleaning the injector nozzles more than anything else), and maybe use oils low in Calcium (google LSPI and Calcium oil additive).

Good luck.

 

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: Trav
I have been seeing a lot of DI injectors over the past year, previously it was mostly marine DI like the Yamaha, Mercury optimax hybrids and Evinrude E-tec units but now the cars are getting up in miles they are coming in.
I have done 4 sets of Mazda Speed 6 injectors in the last month, the were in terrible shape, loaded with carbon, burnt filters in 2 of the sets (no idea why), clogging, bad spray pattern.
No electrical failures just heat and carbon issues.



Any idea how many miles logged before they started having problems with the injectors?

 

[DBMaster]

Sounds like running some PEA cleaner through every few months might be worthwhile after all.

 

[Robenstein]

BMW used to be a reliable brand with regular maintenance. But those days have gone the way of the dodo. BMW, like many makers, has suffered from the plague of the bean counters. Cost cutting combined with a Teutonic propensity of over complicating things has resulted in problems for Beemer owners.

But it could be worse, you could own a Jag.