Fuel injector cleaner in the tank: the case of the missing photos

While there are always exceptions, the gasoline supply in the USA today is very clean compared to other industrialized nations, or even the USA of 50+ years ago.

...it's almost as if they are marketing to your fears, rather than the facts.

 

I thought it was techron or one of those companies that had exactly those pictures on the stick out part of the label that comes on those fancy techron bottles certain times of the year during certain marketing campaigns or what the heck ever I thought STP might have done the same too but maybe that was the pictures of the tops of the pistons which is irrelevant. But just this things go I would think even a metal injector or the poly injectors You know with 200,000 miles on them or better it might just be a good idea to exchange them for a set of clean ones just because certainly can't hurt cleaned injectors you know you're talking $48 or something as a place right up the street from me called diesel something another that's what they do work on diesel fuel injection systems they have a setup that can blow out and clean up injectors that are very expensive to replace generally speaking so they can get lot of mileage out of them or whatever you hours something It is possible. I realize diesel is much dirtier than other fuels but then again lots of people are running fancy filters where needed and that can go a long way to the cleanliness and what have you But just at the mileage rate or the amount of hours on a set of injectors at 200,000 mi just seems to me getting a new set or at least a clean calibrated set with a clean bill of health would kind of makes sense seems like it's a relatively inexpensive way to know that at least you're injecting what you need to be and you're not sure anyway.

 

Four new Toyota injectors would be kind of an expensive purchase to make "just because".

Four new internet injectors can be relatively inexpensive, but you might be using them to replace better injectors (or injectors that would be better after bench cleaning).

The approach that seemed most satisfactory to me several years ago was to use an injector restoring service that provided before and after reports on the flow patterns and rates. The before report gave you a way to know whether you had been on the right track to suspect the injectors in the first place, and the after report gave you confidence on what you were putting back in.

The downside of that approach was car downtime while the injectors were off for restoration. For a while we had a thing going where we'd cross-ship you the latest restored set and you'd ship yours to the restorer.

By the way, what we observed while we had that thing going was that two out of three times, the injectors weren't a problem; they already passed with flying colors in the 'before' test, and of course the swap did not end up fixing those owners' engine issues.

In contrast, when the 'before' testing showed them bad, the engine issue was definitely resolved after the swap. And a few attempts with in-tank cleaning products had already been made and not resolved the issue, so that lent support to the idea that the in-tank products are not as effective.

 

So then the lesson learn is that the Toyota injectors are pretty good and even if high mileage and all that many of them still work up to snuff and it's not worth fooling with them perfect sounds good to me.