Literally spewing. Like, a fountain of gas.

I finally caught it in the act. Basically on first startup after sitting a few days, it will immediately fire up but the gas smell becomes quickly overwhelming. Pop the hood and there is gas spraying from all fuel lines on cylinders 3 and 4 and maybe cyl 2 as well. The car has a brand new cold start injector installed as well as six new fuel injectors.

If you shut it off, let it sit a minute or two and restart it, the gas slows to a drip, then eventually goes away. Hot starts afterward produce no gas. It's like there is too much pressure on the rail.

The short lines going to and from the rails and injectors all look good. Most were replaced when we replaced the injectors.

Obviously we can't have this because it's a major fire hazard, but what's the most likely answer! Is there a fuel pressure regulator not doing it's job? A special kind of fuel line we should have used? Unplugging the cold start injector changes nothing.

Jess

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Are the clamps tight? And correct clamps used?

Was fuel injection grade fuel hose used? It's a "must".

Are the leaks coming from the hoses you didn't replace?

Yes, there's a pressure regulator. But, if it was allowing the pressure to get too high, you'd have a running problem: over-fueling/flooding, black smoke, engine choking-out

Cheers
DD

 

I'm going to assume at least one of your questions could be answered in the negative. To be honest, I'm not sure what the correct hose for "fuel injector grade" would be. Same with the clamps. The clamps on the current hoses look like standard screw-tightening clamps. The hoses, typical fuel lines.

One thing I can say is we had leaks before we replaced all the hardware, and leaks after. It's what caused us to replace the injectors and the cold start injector in the first place. I'm pretty sure we replaced old hoses that leaked with new hoses that leaked.

I'm beginning to suspect we used the wrong parts. What should we have used?

Jess

 

Update..

Talked to the shop , we used fuel injection hose and fuel injection clamps.

Jess

 

Sometimes the bodies of the injectors themselves will leak. I've seen it only once, but, still.

This seems less likely since you replaced the injectors.

I wonder if the fuel rail has some pinholes or something?

I think you're gonna have to wait till the engine is cold again and have someone start the engine while you carefully observe where, exactly, the leak is coming from.

Might wanna have a fire extinguisher handy. Or some dry heavy towels to smother a fire. Be careful !

Cheers
DD

 

I was able to see exactly where it was leaking today ... several hose clamp points. The hoses feel very tight on the rail, but fuel was spraying from around the tops of the hoses, the bottoms, etc. The two worst offenders were the upper hose connectors in the center of the rail, one going to the cold start injector and the other to one of the middle cylinders.

What's maddening is, they were leaking BEFORE all the work, too. This car has always been hard to start while hot, which makes me wonder what's going on with the fuel pressure. All new injectors, clamps, hoses -- and it looked like the fountains at Caesar's Palace.

Jess

 

This is a stretch, but the metric sizes of hose do not exactly match the SAE hose sizes here in U.S. I would think a good clamp on the looser size difference could deal with the issue.

Dave

 

Are these the clamps you are using??

 

Because this kind don't work well with small diameter hoses

 

Another possible problem, did you inspect the barbs where the hoses connect over ? If the old hoses were removed before by using a knife aggressively, the barbs could have been gouged / grooved maybe letting fuel escape when starting.

Cheers,
Brian

 

Well, we've thrown some more parts at it. All new fuel injector hoses (again) plus new injector hose clamps (again), and a fuel pressure regulator for good measure.

I'll report back later if things don't improve.

Jess