What is Fuel Injection?

A broken Dodge PCM will leave you stranded

When I came to the United States 10 years ago, my mother warned me that people
from outside of my hometown in Argentina were devils trying to take advantage of
me with their magic. Her warning said that not only would they try to put me down
at every corner, but they would try to take advantage of me because of the fact that
I would be considered an outsider.

It’s been ten years since I left and I can say that her warning hasn’t been right until
a few days ago when the car that took me about nine years to finally purchase
started to act up. My own little piece of magic started to sputter, run poorly while
idling and started to send smoke signals out of the exhaust pipe.

I took my car in to the local “witchdoctor” and he said that I’d need to pay him a fee
that I thought was beyond outrageous for replacing something that I could hold right
in the palm of my hands: the fuel injectors.

Even though he tried to explain to me what they were, I still couldn’t believe him.
For the first time in ten years, I thought that one of those “white devils” my mother
had warned me of was trying to steal from me. So, I came home with one thought
on my mind:

“What is Fuel Injection?”

Like any smart woman, I started to do research on just what fuel injectors are and if
the asking price given by the mechanic I visited was anywhere near fair.

It turned out that fuel injectors aren’t anywhere near magic; but they are something
that seems to be fairly complicated because of the fact that there’s a component
called the ECU that controls the amount of fuel that gets injected.

The ECU, or the engine control unit, receives information from oxygen sensors. It
automatically adjusts the air-to-fuel ratio in direct response to how you drive.

In other words, it provides the optimal amount of fuel to make the car work whether
you’re just sitting there with your car idle or if you’re driving at 90 MPH down the
highway. They’re really just a fancier and more efficient way of doing what
carburetors did before the 1990s when electronic fuel injection become feasible..

There’s two types of fuel injection systems: single point and multi-port fuel injection.

The former type is used in older cars and acts at a single point just like a carburetor
did, because automobile makers were lazier than my ex-husband.

The latter is used in my car and works more efficiently as there’s a fuel injector in
each cylinder of the car. This provides a faster and more efficient response over
single-point fuel injectors.

As for the magic behind how fuel injectors themselves work, they’re actually so
simple that even I can understand how they work without having to study much
about how cars work. When you step on the pedal, the ECU tells your fuel injector to
open. Pressurized fuel spurts out into your cylinder in precise measurements that are
determined by the ECU’s pulse width.
The worst part about my story is that the mechanic I told you about really was trying
to rob me. After learning about fuel injectors, I took it to another more reputable
mechanic whom owned his own little “hole int eh wall” shop to receive a quote that
was a fraction of the first guy’s price.

My new and more trustworthy mechanic told me that my fuel injectors weren’t bad,
nor did ECU repairs need to take place. All he had to do was find one of the many
sensors involved in the fuel injection process and replace it.

I asked him what sensors were involved with my fuel injection systems and he told
me that there were almost as many different sensors in my car as there are types of
shoes for people to wear. There’s one that detects how much fuel is flowing through
the system, one that detects the throttle position, another for the voltage and
another that monitors the manifold’s pressure.

He started to explain each one to me and how it worked, but I told him that he’d
already told me enough to gain my trust. I told him to replace the oxygen sensor,
and that was the best decision I’d made. Not only did that fix my car’s woes, but it
also didn’t make my purse that much lighter.

It just goes to show you that there are still people who will try to take advantage of
me just because I’m a woman. At least I’m able to say that I understand how one
part of my car works and to know when someone’s trying to pull the wool over my
eyes. If you need Chrysler ECM or Jeep PCM repairs visit Solo Auto Computers.