[WestCoast3]

Hey Everyone,

So tuned to MHD Stage 1 about a week ago. Fully Stock, 125000KM. Plugs and coils done at ~85000. Walnut Blasting and HPFP at ~80000.

When I started my vehicle after leaving work yesterday the Engine revved up to about 1200 rpm as per usual on cold starts.

When the revs lowered to the usual 750RPM I have my idle set to, the car began misfiring very badly and shaking. Codes were given for misfires on cylinders 4/5/6. Very low power when attempting to move back and forth or go up the incline of the parking garage.

After idling for a few minutes the vehicle stopped misfiring and began operating as normal, while driving home I had a bit of spirited driving to test it out and no other problems occurred. Let the vehicle sit overnight for about 10 hours and ran into the same problems when starting to go back to work in the morning.

From my own google diagnosis, I feel that 3 of my injectors may be on their way out and leaking gasoline as the vehicle sits. I'm about to order 3 injectors index 12 from FCPEuro and DIY install them within the next month.

My question is will the car be okay to drive in this condition for a month or so? If driving the vehicle may cause issues to become worse, will storing the vehicle be any better for it?

My only concern is that with leaking fuel injectors that storing the car may cause excessive buildup of fuel in the cylinders? Just read horror stories of hydrolocked n54 engines and would like to avoid that.

EDIT: vehicle also makes a weird noise until the misfires clear up, will try to record this after letting it sit for a few hours.

Threw a code for 2a2c - mixture control 2 as well when I went to check on the vehicle at lunch

[SilverStreak18]

Very weird that 3 injectors would fail all at the same time. Id assume it would be something that would impact an entire bank such as an O2 sensor going bad.

[BM3Rrrr]

Did you check your plugs on those cylinders? Do they look wet/black and smell of fuel?
If not it may be an 02 sensor as stated above.

A month!?

While doing that spirited driving to "test it out" did you at least manage to pull a log? Not sure how beating on a car makes sense when there's obviously something wrong with it.

[WestCoast3]

Let the car sit for a couple days and cleared codes before starting up and was given 02 sensor precat bank 2. Along with 456 misfires. Installing new precat 02 sensors for both banks next weekend and going from there.

Hope this clears up the issue before biting the bullet on new injectors

If your injectors are truly leaking, that new O2 will quickly be just as worthless as the one you took out of there.

[vasillalov]

I wish people searched more...

Here is the deal: The fuel in USA has minimum 10% ethanol, sometimes more. In 2019 I think this goes up to 15%. Ethanol has a natural tendency to separate from gasolene and a byproduct of this separation is water. When you don't drive your car for extended period of time, ethanol begins to separate from the gasolene. This is happening in ALL parts of the fuel system - Gas tank, gas lines, fuel pump, HPFP, fuel rail and also inside of your injectors. Over time this causes problems with the injector elements.

My recommendation is simple. Use Marine Stabil (blue label) every time you fill the gas tank. Marine Stabil stabilizes the gasolene and almost completely eliminates the ethanol separation process.

I've been using Marine Stabil for the past 3 years and I've not needed to replace a single injector. Prior to that, I was replacing 2-3 injectors every spring as my car was sitting for good 3 months in the garage during the winter.

[WestCoast3]

The vehicle is a daily driver, hasn't sat in the garage for a while before this. Chevron 94 Canadian seems to be no good from what I've searched, will try that out with American fuel from now on.

Hope 02 sensor replacement fixes my issues, if not time to bite the bullet for injector re/re

Originally Posted by vasillalov

I've been using Marine Stabil for the past 3 years and I've not needed to replace a single injector. Prior to that, I was replacing 2-3 injectors every spring as my car was sitting for good 3 months in the garage during the winter.

That's purely anecdotal, at best.

Are you running an ethanol blend? Full E85? Or just "premium" pump gas currently?

I've run an E60 blend for almost 3 years now and have had no issues with injectors randomly failing. Plenty others are running full E85 with no issues either.

As you already mentioned, you'd likely need to let E85 sit around for MONTHS before noticing degradation in fuel quality. After running some fairly old E85 through my system recently, no issues were noticed; and I have the logs to prove it.

The Sta-bil product you mentioned is just a less diluted version of their "red" product; which in and of itself is ~95% mineral oil to begin with. Will it help to "stabalize" fuel? Sure, I could see using it in carbureted lawn equipment that's gonna be sitting unused within a system that wasn't designed for ethanol use in the first place. On this platform though? I'd need to see more evidence of failure before making a case. Last I checked Brazil mandated that ALL fuel be at least E25 YEARS ago...did BMW supply those cars with "special" injectors and pumps, etc. to deal with those conditions? I don't think so.

In your case, if I knew the car was going to be sitting ~3 months with no use, there's no excuse not to just flush the fuel system completely before putting it up for storage to begin with though; or at least run a few gallons of non-ethanol gas through it.

[MysticRob]

Originally Posted by vasillalov

...When you don't drive your car for extended period of time, ethanol begins to separate from the gasolene... This is happening in ALL parts of the fuel system - Gas tank, gas lines, fuel pump, HPFP, fuel rail and also inside of your injectors. Over time this causes problems with the injector elements... Prior to that, I was replacing 2-3 injectors every spring as my car was sitting for good 3 months in the garage during the winter.

What exact "problems with the injector elements" are occurring that seemingly require the use of any of a dozen 'fuel stabilizers'?
I can run Seafoam thru my chain saw, but it doesn't mean it's going to do anything in a direct injected engine at 1000s of PSI.
Your injector issues sound more related to certain ebay'd injector threads we've all read here.

Originally Posted by FCobra94

That's purely anecdotal, at best.

I agree, that's not causation, it's correlation, at best.
Example: Just because I can type doesn't mean it's keeping me alive. Both things just occur at the same time, independent of each other.

[vasillalov]

It is anecdotal evidence. No dispute there. I am not trying to convince anyone to do anything. You can choose to do whatever you want.

MysticRob every single injector I have purchased was brand new from getbmwparts.com. In only buy OEM replacement parts from verified BMW dealers. Throughout the years, I've been through pretty much all injector indexes. They all have failed on me at one point or another until I started using Marine Stabil.

Let me see if I can provide more background to hopefully make more sense:

You see, I have a pretty unique use case. My BMW has been a dedicated track car for the past 3-4 years. I don't drive it every day. In a year, I put less than 4000 miles on it. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I also live in Chicago. We get long cold winters here. Basically, my car lives in a garage and from middle of October till middle of April, the car is never taken out of the garage. It sits hooked up to a battery charger.

I've owned it since 2009.

What I've noticed is that every time an injector fails on me it is always in the spring time after a prolonged stay in the garage. This means the fuel in the gas tank never gets burned and just sits in the tank. Whats worse, there is no motion at all so the fuel does not even slosh around. A 3 month period of no fuel burn is a perfect condition for the ethanol to separate from the gasolene and do all sorts of damage.

Once I started using Marine Stabil, I no longer had to replace injectors. The last injector I replaced was 3 years ago.

Right now, I have two injectors with index 8, two injectors with index 11 and two injectors with index 12. The car used to have all injectors with index 6.

So yeah, it is 100% anecdotal evidence, but I am an edge case which is on the extreme where I don't use any fuel for 3 months out of the year.

[vasillalov]

Originally Posted by FCobra94

In your case, if I knew the car was going to be sitting ~3 months with no use, there's no excuse not to just flush the fuel system completely before putting it up for storage to begin with though; or at least run a few gallons of non-ethanol gas through it.

IL does not sell fuel without ethanol. Best I can get is 10% ethanol blend.

Yes, my car sits for 3+ months without the engine being fired up. Yep, it is probably not the best thing for it. Yes, it is totally anecdotal evidence.

All I know is that the last injector I replaced 3 years ago and it's all after I started using Marine Stabil. That's all the convincing I need personally.

[MysticRob]

Originally Posted by vasillalov

IL does not sell fuel without ethanol. Best I can get is 10% ethanol blend.

Yes, my car sits for 3+ months without the engine being fired up. Yep, it is probably not the best thing for it. Yes, it is totally anecdotal evidence.

All I know is that the last injector I replaced 3 years ago and it's all after I started using Marine Stabil. That's all the convincing I need personally.

Very interesting. I'm no ethanol expert but I know it attracts water and can cause all kinds of problems, and that moisture and weather have a huge effect on its interactions with modern fuel systems. I'd be curious what actually causes leaking of the fuel injectors themselves, as I've never seen the internals on one. I'd be even more curious to see the differences between all the index changes on our injectors!

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

Originally Posted by vasillalov

IL does not sell fuel without ethanol. Best I can get is 10% ethanol blend.

Yes, my car sits for 3+ months without the engine being fired up. Yep, it is probably not the best thing for it. Yes, it is totally anecdotal evidence.

All I know is that the last injector I replaced 3 years ago and it's all after I started using Marine Stabil. That's all the convincing I need personally.

But like based on your theory, is it because you park your car for 3 months time or do you have the same opinions to use that stuff on cars that are daily driven?

It does seem true ethanol isn't super, why I think I'll just get some ethanol free fuel as running 94 isn't worth it for it's HP in my case.

But I'm really curious in your sayings.

[feuer]

Originally Posted by MysticRob

Very interesting. I'm no ethanol expert but I know it attracts water and can cause all kinds of problems, and that moisture and weather have a huge effect on its interactions with modern fuel systems. I'd be curious what actually causes leaking of the fuel injectors themselves, as I've never seen the internals on one. I'd be even more curious to see the differences between all the index changes on our injectors!

The plunger that is moved by the piezo crystals to cut off fuel get stuck or something in that order. Me and Vasil were neighbors for a while. He helped my when I had the very first injector fail, maybe 5y ago, cyl#6. Rest of the injectors continue failing so I replaced all with index #12 and started using the fuel additive regularly. Now that I have moved and stopped using the influence I had the first index #12 fail on cyl#3. Most of the failures on my car has been in spring, the coolant pump failed twice, both times in April, 3y apart. Similar with the injectors so this deal with the fuel additive whether is anecdotal or not, or is just mare coincidence I don't know. I drive this car literally every day unless is broken and experienced far more injector problems when not using the fuel additive.

[Silent9n54]

Originally Posted by vasillalov

IL does not sell fuel without ethanol. Best I can get is 10% ethanol blend.

Yes, my car sits for 3+ months without the engine being fired up. Yep, it is probably not the best thing for it. Yes, it is totally anecdotal evidence.

All I know is that the last injector I replaced 3 years ago and it's all after I started using Marine Stabil. That's all the convincing I need personally.

any specific reason you dont start it in 3+ months ??? since you have a garage, wouldnt you want to start it at least once every couple of weeks ?? its not like its stored somewhere where you have no access to it for months...

[Wolf 335]

Originally Posted by feuer

The plunger that is moved by the piezo crystals to cut off fuel get stuck or something in that order. Me and Vasil were neighbors for a while. He helped my when I had the very first injector fail, maybe 5y ago, cyl#6. Rest of the injectors continue failing so I replaced all with index #12 and started using the fuel additive regularly. Now that I have moved and stopped using the influence I had the first index #12 fail on cyl#3. Most of the failures on my car has been in spring, the coolant pump failed twice, both times in April, 3y apart. Similar with the injectors so this deal with the fuel additive whether is anecdotal or not, or is just mare coincidence I don't know. I drive this car literally every day unless is broken and experienced far more injector problems when not using the fuel additive.

Which fuel additive are you using in yours, and is this at every fill up?

[tony55343]

the 02 sensor will take care of your issue, I had literally the exact same problem with mine, replaced pre cat 02's , cleared codes, no more issues!

[feuer]

Originally Posted by Wolf 335

Which fuel additive are you using in yours, and is this at every fill up?

Post #7 by vasillalov Marine Stabil (blue label). Use to be every fill up. I have not used it for a year.

[WestCoast3]

Replaced both pre-cat 02 sensors. 100km of driving and no troubles. Thanks everyone!