'02 Impala 3.4L Base 105K: Removing Injectors from Fuel Rail
How do you remove the injectors from the fuel rail on this car? I (unfortunately) removed the fuel rail as part of the LIM gasket replacement, and now on re-install I’m going ahead and replacing the O-Rings like the Helm manual says I should. Today I was really tempted to just slip on the lower O-Rings and forget about the uppers, but I had tugged on one injector so much that I was afraid I might have distorted the seal, which obviously is not good.
Also, and this might be an illusion, but while pulling on the one injector, the seal trying to come out didn’t look like an O-Ring to me. It looked more like a wider, flatter, cylindrical sleeve (like a heating pad wrapped around your arm). The kit has 16 O-rings in it (all black in color), 8 thinner and 8 thicker. It looks like the thinner ones match up with the lowers I pulled off near the injector head. The thicker ones must go at the top, but like I said, it didn’t look like an O-Ring that was trying to come out.
One last thing that you can weigh in on: the injector heads were full of black gunk (or even carbon), so I carefully scraped them around the perimeter with an awl and then cleaned them off with throttle body cleaner. It looks like each injector has two tiny spray holes in the center - and I could see them on each one, but I felt the need to get the crud off each of them. Was this a bad idea?
The injectors are generally held in by being squeezed between the intake manifold and the fuel rail. Sometimes, there is a retainer on the fuel rail holding the injector to it. If there are no visible retainers, then the injectors just pull out with steady even pressure. The seals deform to look like cylinders when installed. I suggest you use some petrolum jelly when reinstalling them. Those o-rings really get compressed, and the jelly helps them to slide easier.
Also, cleaning the injectors was a good thing. I’ve had some so gunked up I had to soak them in kerosene to get it loose enough to clean off.
There IS a clip with “fingers” that wraps around the edge of the rail (although the fingers really don’t grab the rail). This clip is open ended on one side and can slide off. I DID remove this clip on the one I tried to pull out, but I guess the O-Ring is just kind of stuck in there. Tomorrow I’ll try spraying it with carb cleaner, and on re-install I’ll put something on it too.
Found a picture of an actual injector that looks like mine. It says 3.8, and mine is 3.4, but that’s what it looks like:
The black “heating pad”-like cylindrical band that I was referring to must be the section AFTER the clip but BEFORE the O-Ring (which is right at the very top or end). I guess I just keep pulling until it pops out. I’ll trying spraying it and lubing it on the way in too like you mentioned…