Starter shorted out - could this cause my Fuel injectors to go bad????

I have a 90 325is. It has 232,000 miles on it.

The starter went bad. I replaced it.

Immediately after the fix, I noticed poor driveability, especially while the engine was warming up. It idles poorly and drinks a lot of gas.

When my starter failed there was an electrical surge. My power window "circuit breaker" popped out- evidence of too many amps I guess.

What I do know for sure, is that I have an air leak around my injectors. I can hear it. And when I spray throttle body cleaner around the injector the engine revs up.

I have read in the Bentley manual that O-rings on injectors often go bad on high mileage vehicles and cause an air leak. But it is curious that this happened when my starter went bad.

Could an electrical surge cause my injector o-rings to melt???????

If I am going to replace the o-rings, should I just go ahead and replace the injectors. Maybe they were electrically compromised when my starter shorted out.

I am a real novice and want to fix my car as easlily as possible.

All responses are appreciated.

- Ben

Reply to
Ben Martin
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I can't help much in this, except to say that coincidences happen. It's very possible that the O-rings went at the same time as the starter and there is no link between them.

Your car is 16 years old, maybe 17. Rubber, plastic, metal, all wear out and as your car gets older the frequency of failures are more and more likely to happen. For example, in my car the rubber grommets that hold and seal the line that leads from my brake fluid reservoir to the master cylinder went bad just as I got a leak in the upper radiator hose. Two completely unrelated things which happened at the same time.

I understand that with the interconnectedness of so many things in cars that a failure of one thing may lead to the failure of something else. But coincidences happen all the time. Simply replace the O-rings (you should consider replacing all of them at once) and don't worry if one thing caused the other. If the O-ring fails right away, THEN you should start worrying about something else causing it.

Reply to
Voinin

I don't think your failures are related in any way. Since you seem to know you have at least one failed o-ring, you should replace them all before doing anything else. You _could_ have a bad injector or two, but I see no connection between this kind of failure and a shorted starter. If the starter really did short, the electrical path to ground will be through the short and not through any other component. Frankly, if the starter really shorted to ground, I'd think there would be damage to the battery before there was damage elsewhere. If the battery is in good shape, the other stuff should be okay too.

Reply to
Jeff Strickland

Perhaps the car was hard to start due to the bad o-rings and that contributed to the starter failure?

Reply to
Fred W

I have made some progress.

It has been determined that my leak is in the air-intake manifold gasket. I can see the leak when I use a flash light. I hear the leak. I bought the gasket (actually a kit of 5 separate gaskets.) I am going to go ahead and replace the injector o-rings while we have the air-intake manifold off.

Thanks to all!

- Ben

Reply to
Ben Martin

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