There are some VERY expensive kits for cleaning and checking petrol injectors and even just getting your injectors professionally checked is expensive! Generally the pattern and volume of the injectors is checked and the amount of output from the injectors, from a given pressure and time, is checked against specifications of that type of injector.
Well that aint gona happen! 100-200 pound for a testing machine is not justifiable!
So I have a look on Youtube and there are a lot of guys "MacGyvering" up stuff but they were too dodgy for me. However, looking on Ebay I found a little kit that didn't look too bad. In the very least it should tell me if the injector is working!
What I bought.
What you get.
There are two sizes of electrical connectors and two sizes of injector adapters.
How the bits fit together.
Everything just pushes together.
The adapter on the can of cleaner.
Both adapters push on to your can of cleaner. Just remove the spray nozzle by pulling the nozzle off the can of cleaner.
You can use a can of carby, throttle body, MAF sensor cleaner or what ever cleaner you have. I have not researched the best thing to use yet.
Using it.
The pressure of the fluid in the can of cleaner tends to pop the injector off the adapter. So you need to hold the injector on to the adapter with one hand. You then press down on the adapter and valve to get the fluid to flow. I used a battery as a power source. I connected the negative clip to the negative battery terminal but I just tapped the other clip on the positive terminal. The injector is basically a coil of wire and in this case there is nothing to limit the current flowing through the injector except the resistance of the wire itself. Also the injectors are designed to pulse and NOT to be on continuously. So I wouldn't attach the clips to the battery terminals for very long at all!! I recommend just tapping on one terminal to open and close the injector. Warning: the cleaners can be flammable and attaching and removing the alligator clip from the battery causes a small spark. So don't get cleaner (or vapor) near the battery terminals!
Conclusion.
This is a very rough way of testing your injectors. If I had this when I had my original injector problem it would have been a snap to diagnose the injector fault. However it does not tell you if the injector is performing to specification. Indeed, the pressure of the cleaning fluid in the can is not enough to cause the fluid to come out of the injector in a fan pattern. More like a water pistol! You can compare all of your injectors and see if one is down in performance by seeing how far it squirts the fluid (LOL!). Another thing is that the injector can 'fail' from heat or internal damage that this test wont pick up. Even a very expensive tester wont pick that up. These types of failure tend to occur when the injector is in the engine and hot.
Cleaning.
Frankly from what I have seen if an injector's performance is down, then cleaning does not seem to fix it! Even the Youtube video's of professionals cleaning injectors show marginal results at best. In my case the injector nozzle was blocked by some sort of "internal failure". Using the cleaner was not going to fix that. The best thing is prevention. Use a good quality fuel and/or put injector cleaner in your fuel tank from time to time.
