91 injector question

[nic]

Hi, sorry if this is something common among Subie fans, but I am new to these. My 91 Legacy started missing badly, and shot out a code for "inoperable #2 injector". I swapped it for #1 and the miss moved as well, so I assume the injector is bad. Trouble is, I cant find another injector in any of the 6 junkyards. All the Legacys have the 'red top' injectors, and will not fit my rails. I even found a 1990 model, and even it had the red injectors. Can I swap the short rails out and use the red injectors, or do I have to find the white colored "round top ' injectors? Thank you for your expertise!

[mike-tracy]

If you can't find the correct injectors, you can swap in all 4 plus the matching ECU from a different 90-94 legacy model. The car won't run well at all without the correct injectors.

[Legacy777]

Welcome to the BBS.

Does your 91 have an automatic or manual transmission?

Mike's recommendation is probably the best option. In addition, you will have to swap the fuel rails as they are also different. The 90-91 Legacies should have the same injectors, I'm not sure why the 90 you saw had the red injectors...they may have been incorrectly swapped.

[nic]

So, I had an original injector from the car (91 gray-top /auto non-turbo) and an injector from a 94 (red-top/auto non-turbo) checked and flowed at a local shop that rebuilds injectors for a living. The two injectors flow exactly the same at anything under 60 lbs of fuel pressure. The red ones have a completely different spray pattern (he says they have a MUCH better pattern)
I grabbed the rails from the 94, swapped them on my car, and it is truly unbelievable how much better it runs. It starts faster, idles WAY better, and runs smoother than its run in the 10 years Ive had it. The best part? So far, my mileage has gone up by almost 2 mpg!
I didnt swap out ECUs, and am very happy with my results. Now, I know that my old injectors were probably going south, and they were pretty covered with sludge on the pintle. The problem with the gray top injectors is that they are almost impossible to find at junkyards. Every car I found that would have had them had already been robbed of them.
I dont know if the man trans cars would be the same, but Im sure glad I did the swap! Thanks for the advice from members of this board!

[Legacy777]

Nic,

I would recommend swapping the ECU's. I did exactly what you did and while I think my 90-91 injectors were ok, the injector latency is slightly different so that's where the different ECU should play into things. If it's running good now, that's most important, and if you run across a good deal on a 92-94 ECU that should be a pretty straight forward swap. The only difference I found was the MT/AT identifier pin was different for the 90-91 ECU's and the 92 ECU.

I talk a little bit about that & have diagrams in my swap write-up.

http://www.surrealmirage.com/subaru/swa ... l.html#ecu