Dead Diesel – injectors, repair or move on?

Well, it had to happen sooner or later.
🙂

58 plate, 70,000 mile Doblo 1.3 Multijet.
Bought from main dealer at 20,000.

Had one injector replaced when I bought it, now needs two more and a really good going over.

Main dealer have recommended a specialist to keep costs down.
They’re picking it up today.

So, probably about £500 min, plus sorting out the now 70% clogged DPF, do I just pay up or shift it on?

Offered a trade in a few hundred below book by the main dealer, who said they’d offload it to a local mechanic.

Fully main dealer serviced, they tried pushing for a contribution from FIAT, but at 7 years it’s deemed to old.

I’d have another.
But not a Diesel.
😐

If you buy a new car that’ll cost a lot more than repairing the one you have, and you’ll have absolutley no guarantee that won’t crap out on you tomorrow leaving you in the same situation but 5 grand down.

If you fix the car, you’ll know for a fact it’s got new injectors which won’t fail.

Then again, it’s a Fiat.

True.
It’s a Punto underneath, so not much to go wrong and cheap to fix anyway.

It’s fine, if a bit tatty apart from the obvious.

Needs a wishbone.
Has had brakes. AND A SET OF BRAND NEW WINTER TYRES JUST OVER A MONTH AGO.
Sorry.

Tempted to keep it, but worried it’s a moneypit.

Take the Salford approach

Ah, yes.
The Beswick BBQ.

Tbh, it’s so ugly, even fire won’t go near it.

If your happy with the rest of the car then I would spend the money and get it fixed.

Regards the injectors if our handy with the spanners take them out yourself and send them away for reconditioning/programming.
That should save you a few quid and its really not that difficult.

You may be able to save the DPF by running through a specialist cleaner, and a combination of using good quality fuel(the expensive shell one) and some good motorway runs trying to keep the revs up round the 3k mark.
Do this for a few weeks and it may just burn all the crap off thus saving DPF replacement.

Just had to drop £250 to get my powersteering refurbished on my modus which when the cars only worth about £1300 stings a bit but the rest of the car is good(touchwood)and a known entity.

Tempted to keep it, but worried it’s a moneypit.

People think a car is a single thing – it’s not.

Most of it is not connected to anything else. Just because the injectors have failed, doesn’t mean the exhaust will go, or the shocks will fail, or the turbo will fail etc etc. There are obviously some interconnected components, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that one expensive failure will be followed by another.

If it has LOTS of things nearly failing, then that’s a different matter.

Just had to drop £250 to get my powersteering refurbished on my modus which when the cars only worth about £1300 stings a bit

Don’t think of it as investing in an asset – car maintenence is a cost just like tax and insurance etc.

As much as ive argued with molgrips on this matter over his passat. Imo he is right here.

Id get the thing to a diesel specialist who can check h injection pump and refurb the injectors. Last timei got injectors done the were 40 quid each to be reconned.

It’s about that for old skool pump driven spring loaded injectors. OP’s car might be more, depending on what’s wrong with the injector. I think you can probably just replace nozzles for not much money if that’s what’s wrong, but if it’s failed completely it’d be more.

Another reason to keep my tractors running 🙂

Well, it’s in with the specialist now, so we’ll see what he comes up with.

Thanks for the replies.

Common rail injectors cost far more than £40 to get serviced. It usually costs £20-30 just to get them tested on a proper test bench (when you have £200k invested in a test bench, you quickly learn how to charge!).

Plus not every place has the ability to properly test the injectors post-rebuild to generate a new code. To whoever mentioned it above, the injectors themselves aren’t coded. The only electrical thing in them is a magnetic coil or piezo stack. The code that is written on injectors, is a measurement of their flow rate at various pressures/opening points, which is then used by the engine ECU to compensate for injector performance.

Personally, if you plan on keeping the car, I’d make sure remanufactured injectors from a good source were fitted. Bosch are OE on these engines, and aftermarket Bosch injectors aren’t that expensive. I’ve fitted common rail injectors from various sources, and you really do get what you pay for.
However I would be questioning why 3 injectors have now failed. Despite dealing with several hundred of these engines in quite a mixed fleet, I could probably count on one hand the number of injectors I’ve changed.

As for the DPF, it should sort itself out, unless it’s completely blocked. I can’t remember of the top of my head how Fiat calculate the %, but I think 70% should still be within the limit of normal working limits.

Then again, it’s a Fiat.

With a GM engine.

Like that’s any better 😉

1.3 is a Fiat engine. Last genuine GM diesel engines were the old 2.0 and 2.2.
Everything since has been a mix of Fiat (1.3, 1.6, 1.9/2.0) and Isuzu (1.7).

When mine needed it (completely different car but, general principles), I looked at endless forum posts about £1000 costs, then changed it for a recon for about £130 including the special tool required and the obd interface and software to recode. Then discovered that if I’d looked better, brand new oe injectors for my car were £154. So the moral is 1, it might not be as expensive as you think and 2, don’t just assume recons are good value.

Also, having an obd scanner is dead handy in general. Aaargh the engine warning light’s on, what do I do? Plug in the laptop, have a look

70k for injectors is poor in my view. I would want the pump checking to make sure it’s not braking up and damaging or blocking the injectors with debris. The pump is normally after the fuel filter so any debris goes straight into the injectors. Crappy diesel with poor lubrication kills fuel pumps. Supermarket fuel is not the same as Shell or BP in my view. No point fitting new injectors with a pump that’s breaking up!!