Rust in fuel rail...suggestions?

[BlurpleXJ]

Hey folks. My XJ was hesitating in a terrible way - almost unwilling to accelerate at all - on the way back from visiting some family. I figured it for a fuel-related problem all my sensors are pretty recent, so I pulled the fuel rail. Come to find out there's a fair amount of rust in there.

I poured out the fuel through a clean paper towel, and got a lot of black specks.

I pulled all the injectors, scraped what I could, ran a full bottle of carb cleaner through the rail and held a lot of it in there and shook things around to soak it well. Dumped a full bottle of Seafoam in the fuel tank and hoped for the best. It started and hesitated again for the first few minutes but ran well once I got it through to highway RPMs for the drive home. I think my 'treatment' helped but I do think this crud from the rail is clogging my injectors. I don't want to see this hesitation come back. I'm fairly convinced the problem is the rust in the rail. The tank is a new Genright unit, and the hard lines look to be in good shape. The fuel pump is a Bosch number and new within the last 30k miles.

To get to the point, what would you guys do to clean up the fuel rail? I'm considering pulling one from a junkyard but last time I went XJ hunting most of them had rails with injectors out of them, open to the air. I doubt it would be much of an improvement.

 

[RoyalXJ]

Electrolysis. YouTube it.

 

[ftwelder]

Electrolysis won't work on the inside of the tube unless you cut the end off and insert the electrode inside. I suggest oxalic acid in crystal form. You can buy it as "Savogran" wood bleach. mix up a 1/4 cup in a plastic tray and let it soak overnight. You may need to clean the oils off the metal first with something like acetone.

It's that darn alcohol in the gas causing the problem.

 

[RoyalXJ]

You don't need to cut it to get an electrode in. It took care of the little bit of rust that I had in my rail. A friend of mine owns a restoration business. He uses the process almost on a daily basis. He made up a special little setup and it worked like a charm.

 

[go1lum]

How about muratic acid? Its what i use for rusty gas tanks on old projects.

 

[Hopkins]

eBay has a bunch listed in good shape with injectors intact. Not too bad either IMO $30 to $50. Haha that's the route I would go, but I am not too experienced in playing with acid compounds

 

[markw]

Get another rail. Flush the rest of the system. Don't bother trying to "save" this one, you'll spend more time than it's worth.

 

[outlander]

Either you have a prob with condensation in your gas and or like mentioned above ethenol content in modern fuel.
I suggest using stabil 360 in every tank after you get a new fuel rail.Or you might try taking the rail off and injecting naval jelly into it and flushing it out after letting it soak for a few hrs.

 

[BlurpleXJ]

Just to close the loop on this, I appreciate all the suggestions guys. On the condensation issue, that may be true but the jeep sat for almost two years while I was deployed and wasn't run for months on end. I think with regular use it may be fine. On the electrolysis, I didn't find a place to do it locally so I can't speak to that.

Anyways, I ended up trying to save this rail since I had no quick replacement, and bathed it in Barkeeper's Friend (which is mostly oxalic acid) overnight. That did some good, so I ran it through a few more half-hour soaks and cleaned it as well as I could between. More progress, but still visible rust. I used dental picks and long thin springs through the injector ports to scrape away whatever I could from inside. Finally ended up running most of a bottle of commercial rust remover (mostly phosphoric acid) through it in several soak cycles - including sealing all the holes and shaking it around a lot before dumping it out again. Real low-tech stuff here.

It didn't end up perfect, but I got it to a point where no particles are coming out in a rinse. I've repainted it, rinsed it in fuel and stuck it back on the jeep, but if anyone else is thinking of doing this don't waste your time. If I had a good one nearby that I could have grabbed on short notice (or an ebay one that has pics of the inside), that would have been the way to go. I'm probably going to swap it for a better one later, just for peace of mind. And maybe run that stabil 360 as well.

 

[dan1977p]

Stabil, Seafoam, Carb cleaner all work in similar ways and which one you use is usually user preference. I'd stay away from carb cleaner since it's technically not safe for the sensors but in small doses, folks do fine with it. Are you sure the rust on the mating surfaces isn't causing your o-rings to not seal properly? Air getting in or fuel pressure losses before then injector could cause your issues too.
Either way, once fixed, if you drive it, you won't get the condensation and if you do deploy again, put some stabil in the tank, top it off and run it for 5-10 minutes to keep this from happening again.