SootMan,
Who is this mysterious customer with leaking injectors? Why am I not hearing from someone? If there is a problem we need to know about it and get it cleared up. Remember that nozzles will essentially never leak externally on a CR and the nozzle is the part we replace/sell. Any companies injectors can leak from the body ( injector holder ) internally from the check ball and seat area or in other internal locations.
Connector tubes do NOT need to be changed unless they are damaged. We check return rates daily using old connector tubes that have probably been used 300 or more times each before they require replacement. The replacements are required from squeezing the tubes tip down to a diameter that is too small, not from sealing problems. We can generate injector pressures here that will exceed anything the market is currently running. 35,000 plus PSI. No leaks from tubes sealing.
Lets clear up who gets what in nozzles and why as of now:
All 03 and early 04 injectors get a new custom nozzle. Not a stock nozzle. This is because the stock nozzle is in no way a performance design and could never provide a HP number from these engines, no matter how much it is modified. Repalcement is mandatory if you want to make high power. Most feel the 03-04 engine is at a performance disadvantage to the newer, but we only need to look at Richard Browns 03 trucks ( plural ) making over 1200 HP with 1 turbo and nitrous. This is the highest CR engine in the country now.
The 04.5-07 600 and 610 engines get either a new custom nozzle or we use a stock, highly modified nozzle. This is depending on how the truck is used and what the goal is. Hardcore HP junkies will typically get a custom nozzle but not in all cases. Mileage and pressure curves are the criteria we use to determine who gets what. The stock part for the 04.5 and up engines is a great piece. I have maintained this since the first engines were released. Actually we had the first stab at the 600 engine injectors long before any other company thanks to a special relationship with OEM's. The stock part, properly modified is a great starting point and works very well. To better the stock part we needed to reduce the form compared to the stock part. This works great for performance, but it killed us on long term durability when guys had their pressure curves set up to aggresively i.e. pressure boxes, modified pumps, dual pumps, rail return caps or combinations of all those things. Several things were at play to reduce the durability. 1) 50% more duty cycle on the injector with the extra injection event. 2) much higher stock not to mention modified pressure curves on these engine VS the 03-04's. 3) and the release of the modified CP's that run pressure curves higher.
The reduced form of the custom nozzle was just not stable enough in this enviro for long term use. So, we began to modify the stock nozzle with EDM, special grinding and hydro erosion techniques to get the best performance we could and the lasting durability of the dual guided stock nozzle. lets face it, light weight helps performance of all parts, but too light was spelling trouble when the pressure junkies were capping rails and so forth.
Unfortunantly we have many more hours of work and much higher costs in the special processing we do to the stock part VS the custom. This caused a huge backlog while tooling and machining parameters were being set up.
The highly modified nozzles work very well and are a great compromise between long term durability and bleeding edge. Nearly of our high powered trucks now run them. Some still run the customs.
6.7 trucks get both a modified stock nozzle for low power and a custom nozzle for high power use. We have a 6.7 over 1K in HP now.
Guys want to use their trucks for daily driving and go hundreds of thousands of miles without worries of when the injectors will crap out. They also want to make as much clean power as possible. Having the same goals, puts us in the same plane.
Why do we want your injectors for assembly? Why wont we sell nozzles only?
It is simple. The CR injectors are not the old robust things we all had in the early days with the 12 and 24's. They leak internally, externally and are failing at alarming rates. For this we test each injector. Set up the opening pressure, make cetain nothing is leaking and repair these problems if needed.
All injectors are now fully tested for pressure, return rates, injected quantity averaged over 1000 shots/cycles. This insures they are working perfectly when they leave. We test at 25,000 PSI and can go higher if needed.
Selling a nozzle set would be so much easier for us VS fully testing. Much less shipping headaches, tracking numbers, shipping cost, rushing to make deliveries on time, etc. No more concerns over leaking injectors. If we just distributed nozzles the leaking and inoperable injectors would be the customers problem. Hard starts, long starts, goofy rail pressures, high FCA duty cycles would all be someones elses problem. In the end, that would only make our bottom line larger while the customer is left scratching his head why his truck wont make power, gets crap economy, etc.
Our procedure minimizes troubles by finding and repairing leaks before you ever install them. The retaining nuts get the proper torque, the internal leaks get a proper repair and any all bad parts can be replaced before they leave. We have had to repair new injectors with as little as 7000 miles on them. It simply it is not advisable to swap on nozzles.
Sure it is more costly and time consuming for all of us. We make no money on repairs when it is said and done. We have more time, energy, and parts costs than we can ever make up by charging what we do for a complete injector rebuild. Its 25% of what is costs to buy a new one and our parts are no cheaper to purchase than anyone elses.
If anyone has a leaking injector, a misfiring injector or a problem after they receive them from us, it can almost always be reduced to installation error, dirty installers getting yukkies in the system, crap fuel, algae, etc.
Hope this helps,
Don~