All common rail diesels are inherently flawed?
Was speaking to bloke who used to be a senior engineer for about 20 years with two large car manufacturers (one Swedish and one German) and he reckoned that the injectors on practically all common rail diesel engines will run into problems.
He gave me a long technical explanation (which was over my head TBH) but the gist of what he seemed to be saying is that the diesel injectors across many manufacturers (with the exception of Honda who use their own design as in the most recent Accord) come from limited sources such as Bosch, Siemens, Lucas etc and that because of the extremely high pressure which diesel is forced through them (something like 1200 bar, or psi?), a spring mechanism within those injectors will fail sooner than those found in petrol engines or non common rail diesels engines.
He says failure rates are reflected in the types and number of warranty claims made against the manufacturers he used to work for with far higher than average incidences of injector failure on common rail diesel engines etc. He reckons that manufacturers are still strugglying with high mileage tolerances with the injectors on common rail diesel engines.
I did some scanning of various user websites as I've been considering a Volvo S60 and Mondeo recently and true enough, there do seem to be problems with the injectors used in the 2002 D5 engined Volvos and a higher than average number of injector faults with high mileage Ford TdCI engines with numerous owners stories about such failures.
Anyone have any views, technical or otherwise?
Re: All common rail diesels are inherently flawed?
I have a nissan primera 2000 turbo diesel it's a 2000 as in year model is this a common rail diesel? (it's done 135,000 miles, I've had it since 95,000)
texteditor
Re: All common rail diesels are inherently flawed?
Fiat are also playing about with Diesel injectors - look at the new Multijet motors - they are ridiculously efficient. Chap at work gets 800 odd miles out of a 50 litre tank of juice in his 1.3 Multijet Dobló van.
Re: All common rail diesels are inherently flawed?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tumble
Fiat are also playing about with Diesel injectors - look at the new Multijet motors - they are ridiculously efficient. Chap at work gets 800 odd miles out of a 50 litre tank of juice in his 1.3 Multijet Dobló van.
Fiat created the Common Rail diesel engine (as used in passenger cars) and the first car to have a common rail diesel engine was the Alfa 156 - in fact they pioneered the direct injection diesel engine 10 years before that.
More recently they created the 2nd Gen common rail - MultiJet technology, and as you mentioned they can get insane economy (and power) using this. The 1.3 you mentioned is being used in the Panda, Punto, Corsa, and Suzuki Swift and won engine of the year 2005 beating VW, Honda, Pug etc.
The 1.9 version is being used in various Fiats, Vauxhalls, Suzukis, and Saabs as apparently it is that damn good.
I don't know a lot about the MultiJet technology but it electronically divides the injection into smaller "Jets" to reduce noise and emissions, and increase economy and power. So maybe they have also addressed the issues with Common Rail injector springs too.
Re: All common rail diesels are inherently flawed?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tumble
Fiat are also playing about with Diesel injectors - look at the new Multijet motors - they are ridiculously efficient. Chap at work gets 800 odd miles out of a 50 litre tank of juice in his 1.3 Multijet Dobló van.
Problem is, of the Doblo's i've seen i doubt if it will do all 800 miles in one go!.
:lol:
Re: All common rail diesels are inherently flawed?
You may be right, although the new gen ones seem to be actually welded together, rather than held up with spit and baling wire... :D