Hi CL members,

Before holiday vacation I had been trying to improve my fuel trims and they were ok but not great and I couldn't figure out why.
Both banks would average approx +10 to 11% for LT + ST and I did a lot of work on the car to tighten it up- coils, plugs, gaskets, hoses, etc, etc.
2004 RX330 @ 150k miles

I took it to an indy tech and paid for a 2nd opinion to find vacuum leaks, diagnostics, or anything I missed and he couldn't find anything either.

The car ran good but I could hear it wasn't running balanced so I took my stethescope and listened to the fuel injectors(harbor freight $10)
and that's when I discovered I had a failing fuel injector on cylinder #2- 1st cylinder on front bank. It sounded very weak compared to
the other two.




In a panick I went online and ordered a set of reman Low Mileage injectors and paid a little extra to have them Flow Matched to 1% and it cost $110 for the set.
I didn't want to take a chance of running my engine with a cylinder running lean!
So I put 3 of them on the front bank and drove up north and back approx 2k miles.

Here is the improvement results on the front bank with new injectors from +11% down to +5.5%.



Now that these injectors have proven themselves 2k miles I moved them to the back yesterday and put 3 more new ones on the front.


And plese notice the immediate improvement in my fuel trims- ECU is adding much less fuel correction to hit Stoich at the CAT!


Car has never run this good since I bought it.

PS- If anyone has had an injector failure or experiences or tips for CL members you are invited to share.

 

Great 411...Awesome you got them flow matched also.

 

Thank you felix, My fear was running one cylinder on each bank lean & hot and nuking my engine.

Interestingly it was the last injector on the fuel rail on each bank at Cylinder #1 & #2 and it makes me wonder if
this is a common ticking time bomb for this engine at high mileage.

I saw a lot of listings for reman injectors on ebay so I picked a guy with good feedback and made a special
request for low hours/mileage injectors and asked for flow matching to 1% and he only charged me a little extra.

 

Who would sell low mileage injectors? I'd think the injectors would go w/ the engine being sold. I'd say its a one off issue you had going. There are lots & lots of 1mz/3mz powered Toyota/Lexus's on the road w/ high mileage. It'd help if the injectors were professionally cleaned at a shop that has the machine. It does make a difference vs store bought chemicals, all thou those do help, such as techron, ect. IDK if the 300/330's have a internal fuel filter like the 350's do, or a external replaceable fuel filter, as if so that'd help. Again great you took the time to figure it out.

 

I have used our local Toyota dealership for service and repair jobs that I can't do myself. I have had much better luck with them than the Lexus dealer. One time, the Toyota dealership tracked down an aftermarket radiator for me entirely on their own initiative that saved me several hundred dollars. I will never go to the Lexus dealership for anything other than warranty work and recalls.

 

Maybe I'm super lucky never had a Toyota injector fail or even show signs of failure. I wonder if this is somewhat model/platform specific I recall another 3MZ (maybe here) that had the injector go bad and **** gas into the combustion chamber.

 

Nice Margate and congrats! Nothing like success when having problems like that so glad it worked out.

When I purchased my Jaguar I sent out the injectors to be cleaned and flow matched the price was very reasonable. On my RX I cleaned them myself quite easy to do, it seemed to run fine prior still runs like new at 171k miles thankfully. Clean them and replaced the O-rings that hold them in as they get very brittle with age

 

Thank you @Leeper .
We sold our 2nd car because my wife rarely drives anymore. Just one 3 mile trip once a week to the grocery store

So, my RX330 is my only daily driver now
I keep saying I will trade it up for a newer model but it really has been a good car.

When I first got it a few years ago it wasn't intended to be our only car but now it is.

So, I went thru it trying to do a lot of premaintenance stuff instead of waiting for failures.

Coil packs, fuel injectors, etc, etc