Miata Mailing List: September 1994, Message #15
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   From: RTHORPE@MUNCH.GSFC.NASA.GOV
Subject: RE:  FI Cleaners
   Date: Thu, 1 Sep 1994 12:43:43 -0400

Fuel injectors are not nearly as new or high tech as many people 
(especially dealers with old carburator dinosaurs) like to claim.  
My 1978 Dasher had fuel injection which worked just dandy until 
about 110,000 miles.  I replaced all four injectors at a VW dealer 
for $200 including parts and labor.  Never had another problem with
them (had problems with everything else but thats a different story).

My opinion on fuel injector cleaners - skip them.

Drive the car hard on the highway every once in awhile to "blow" out 
the injectors (worked on the Dasher at least).  Hope if we all need 
new injectors we can find them at $200 installed again (there's also 
a test where you spray gasoline onto a wall (probably paper instead)
and look at the spray pattern to see if its OK - for $200 and 110K
on the car I skipped that step).

BTW - in 1988 an Acura dealer told me I shouldn't worry about the 
fact that the Integra base model didn't have fuel injection because 
that was really high tech. My rusty 10 year old car was sitting in 
his lot and guess which one I drove home. Too bad the Miata's didn't 
come out that year - I would have left the Dasher for that one......

Red Devil et.al. ('94 Red A pkg. with Fuel Injection 
(crowd roars in approval))