Need advice from fuel injector experts

[M104]

Hello everyone,

I recently bought a 96 Peugeot 406 1.8, didn't really need it but couldn't pass. It is litteraly like a brand a new car with 180,000 km on the odo. Single owner car who did everything himself and cleaned the car every time he drove it and stored it in his heated garage for 30 years. No leaks, no rust, no scratch, nothing. I like the car so much that I drive it as much as the Mercedes.

Anyway, fuel prices are insane here and like all of my cars, all it will see is E85. Original injectors are Bosch EV1 4 hole. I like to install bigger injector rather than rely on fuel trims to keep AFR as it should. What I had laying around was a set from a Volvo 740 or 940 2.3 turbo, they are also Bosch EV1 injectors with about +25% more flow but unless the original injector, they only have one hole with a pintle.

I'd like to know if the spray pattern will be an issue or not. I'm mostly concerned because this is a 4 valve per cylinder engine. I've discovered that a lot of older 4 valve engines using this type of injectors. I am thinking about tons of models from BMW, Porsche, Alfa Romeo and others. If it turns out I shouldn't be driving the car like that I can always find similar high impedance 250cc EV1 injector with 4 holes (Saab used them) or even EV6 injectors.

I switched to the bigger injector while I had a mixture that I think was about E35. Fuel trims were positive but not maxed out with the original injectors and negative with this set but the cars feels better than it did before, even when it was on E0 gas. The engine was always unresponsive around 2000 rpm and was slow to rev up to 4000 rpm before much feels better and now which is counterintuitive sicne I went from 4 hole EV1s to one hole EV1s.

 

[demarpaint]

@Trav is our resident expert! Hopefully he sees this.

 

[scrllock]

No one can tell you conclusively without pretty specific info. Piston shape, injection angle, as well as the pattern itself will all contribute to combustion quality. I really doubt you'll find anyone here with data on spray patterns for a Peugeot (but you never know), and my experience with experimenting with swapping other OEM injectors is that you can cause catastrophic failure if you let too much fuel pool into the rings. This would be exacerbated by running ethanol.

To me it sounds like the only similarity in the injectors is the connector, the spray pattern is certainly very different. I wouldn't do this myself.

 

[Trav]

Post the number of the original injector, it begins with an 0280 number unless the manufacturer of the car used their own in that case post that number so I can cross reference it to Bosch.

 

[M104]

Original injectors are 0 280 150 446 and "new" ones are 0 280 150 749.

 

[Trav]

You can download the file I just uploaded. I has all the data for these injectors. I pm'd you the download link I created.

 

[M104]

This is very helpful. I can see myself spending a lot of time trying to find the best injector and I am amazed at the difference in spray pattern data from injectors that I thought were almost identical.

 

[Trav]

Notice none are approved for E85 ethanol, you could get away with E10 but E85 is just too corrosive for those. You need stainless internal injectors with special E85 O rings if you want to run it.

 

[FZ1]

Notice none are approved for E85 ethanol, you could get away with E10 but E85 is just too corrosive for those. You need stainless internal injectors with special E85 O rings if you want to run it.

Wow. That's smart!

 

[M104]

Notice none are approved for E85 ethanol, you could get away with E10 but E85 is just too corrosive for those. You need stainless internal injectors with special E85 O rings if you want to run it.

Yes I was worried about that but realized than in almost 15 years of running E85, none of my cars had injector troubles and all of them used Bosch EV1 injectors or Siemens Deka with the same design. Maybe they were not built with E85 in mind but that doesn't mean they have problem with it in the real world. At least this is my experience.

 

[Trav]

It possibly depends on climate, I see a lot of injectors that are corroded as the fuel absorbed a lot of moisture. Nitro is much worse but that is not a concern with street cars.

 

[M104]

From what I see, the spray pattern shouldn't be too different between both injectors however I probably have everything to gain by swapping EV6 injectors in. This engine had EV6s at the end of the production during the early 2000s.

 

[JD!]

The big concern is that running higher flow injectors than stock requires injector scaling in the tune, as they'll deliver more fuel for the same pulse width. Essentially what you're seeing here (I think you understand this) is that the higher flow of the injectors and the greater fuel demand running E85 are cancelling each other out, causing you to reach a more appropriate AFR. The ability for fuel trims to correct for situations like this is limited in older cars with narrowband O2 sensors, which is why it felt sluggish during heavier acceleration in the first place with the lean condition, but you may find it's now running rich during higher load if you overcorrected the injector flow. It will also run excessively rich in open loop if you run a lower ethanol content fuel.

Would be illuminating to put an aftermarket wideband in there to monitor AFRs, otherwise check the spark plugs for fouling.

The spray pattern is less important in a port injected system (relative to direct injection) than the overall atomization of the fuel.

In my experience the biggest problem with ethanol is its more hygroscopic nature, and the water causes both corrosion and a black goop that forms at the injector nozzles. I've heard either Seafoam or running a tank of regular pump gas through once in a while can help with this, but the best way to prevent this is to not let the car sit on the same tank of gas for long.

 

[M104]

Indeed it is a crude way of switching to E85 but it works well enough. In other cars I have a system called Eflexfuel, what it does is increase injector duty cycle according to what the ethanol content sensor sees. The "issue" with swapping injector is that you're stuck with say +30% enrichment, similar to an ethanol conversion kit without an ethanol sensor. In this case I will have to rely on fuel trims to adjust AFR between summer (E75) and winter (E65) E85. This Bosch MP5.1.1 ECU is old but triggers a CEL if mixture is rich or lean above or below (I think, from my observation trying various ethanol blends) +25% or -25%.