Clack Clack Clack......Oh no.....
Its a lovely Saturday morning and I'm itching to get out in the car and push the tune further.... its a test engine right, if it blows up, who cares? We can just get on with building the fully forged engine and go to the moon. So I am getting a bit carried away with ignition timing and taking out as much transient retard as I can to make it feel crisp on the throttle and all of a sudden I hear an almighty clack on the head phones thats nothing like det from too much timing so I remove the head phones and investigate. Under light acceleration and idle there are no noises, everything sounds fine but as soon as some medium load is applied BANG! BANG! wow.... Ok what have I broken?
Rewind a few weeks earlier and I wanted to freshen up the direct injectors, sent a batch off and got a cleaned and perfectly flow matched set sent back just as a bit or preventative maintenance. Well you know the old saying of if it isn't broken don't fix it? Never a truer word was spoken.
Injectors came back looking lovely with fresh looking seals but an astonishingly cheap bill(clue number 1)
Changing these things is not the nicest of jobs! Lots to remove on top of the engine before getting to them. One was stuck in the cylinder head and took excessive force to remove. With all the care you need to take when working with very high pressure direct injection systems and the fact you are directly exposing the combustion chamber to debris and dirt they are definitely something you should avoid touching unless you absolutely have to! With everything cleaned up and many swear words spoken I slotted the new injectors in and everything seemed good....
Until back to the current day where we have this horrendous noise, a bit of research online and a chat with Adrian who had heard DI seals blow before we decided it was definitely damaged Di seals so back down the rabbit hole we go pulling the top end to pieces again. Upon removal our suspicions were confirmed, one seal was completely blown out and missing all others were heavily damaged, I have a feeling cheap aftermarket seals have been used here!
Luckily we have the proper Toyota service tool for changing the seals which is a glorified washer and cone to stretch the seals over the injector and shrink them back. I highly recommend using the correct tool a sit makes it a super easy job. On top of that we sell a complete Di service seal kit which includes all the seals you will need if you have the unfortunate luck of needing to do this job. See here : https://www.fensport.co.uk/products/direct-injector-seal-kit-set-of-4-gt86-brz-fa20-engine
With genuine seals fitted I have since pushed the engine much much harder and haven't encountered any issues so the message to take away from this is LEAVE THE DI INJECTORS ALONE...... but if you have to touch them get the proper tool and order the genuine seal kit from us ;)