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Old timer in Nashville showed me how to clean injectors with diesel and a coffee filter back in 2009
I was working at a shop off I-24 and this guy rolls in with a 7.3 Powerstroke that was running rough. He pops the hood, pulls the fuel bowl drain, and pours it through a paper coffee filter into a glass jar. Showed me all the crud in the filter and said "this is why you change your fuel filter every other oil change not whenever the light comes on." He was retired, just helping his nephew out. Never forgot that. Any of you guys still do stuff the old way or have a trick someone showed you that stuck?
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finley_smith13d ago
Year I had a 1994 7.3 Powerstroke back in 2011 and did the coffee filter thing a few times. It's more of a diagnosis than a cleaning like you said. But that ATF and acetone soak actually works pretty well if you let them sit for a full 24 hours. I did it once on a set of injectors from a 6.5 Detroit that had sat for three years and it freed up two stuck ones completely. Just make sure you blow them out real good with compressed air before reinstalling or you'll smoke out the whole neighborhood on startup.
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abbyhall13d ago
Yeah but the coffee filter thing is a good visual check, not really a cleaning method. The old timer probably meant running some diesel cleaner through the tank, not filtering the crud out of the bowl. If you really want to clean injectors the old way, pull them and soak them in ATF and acetone for a day, that'll break up the varnish way better than any filter trick.
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That ATF and acetone mix is no joke. Buddy of mine tried it on a set of injectors from an old Ford he'd let sit for two years and man, he forgot to blow one out good enough. That cloud of smoke coming out of the exhaust literally brought his neighbor running over thinking the grass was on fire.
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