With the recent developments over on MSF regarding the SURE Halo seals, I began to wonder if my set of seals would show the same symptoms. To be honest, I really thought that maybe, just maybe, I would be one of the lucky ones for once and that my seals were perfectly fine and that they are doing what they're suppose to do. I had reason to believe that too because I didn't exhibit any of the signs that the seals were failing (weird KR readings under PT and WOT, car stuttering, car misfiring, loss of power, etc) Actually, I lied, I did get the occasional P0300 (random misfire) but it only happens on idle and it would only come back once in a blue moon after I cleared it.
So today with the help of loki (Chris) and breakfasteatre (Alex), we took apart the car to get at the seals. BTW, doing it the second time around is MUCH easier than the first time.
Everything went pretty smoothly and upon removing the fuel rail, we see this:
You'll notice that the area around the injector is discoloured. Normally, it should be silver like the rest of the engine, but because the fuel is leaking, it has become a yellowish-brownish color.
Then we proceeded to remove the injectors and here's what we saw:
This last picture was even more scary. You may not notice it, but the SURE injector seal is stuck, yes STUCK in the engine. If you look carefully, you'll see it:
It took loki and I approx 45 min to an hour trying to pry that seal out. We used a combination of pliers, dentist like tools, carb cleaner, PB Blaster and lots and lots of Q-Tips to do the job. It was probably the toughest part of the ordeal.
Here's a picture of the injectors. The one on the furthest right is the injector with the seal stuck in the engine.
Close up of injector + seal (+ loki's thumb):
After the seal has been removed (sorry for the blurry pics, my hands aren't really steady):
All 4 seals together:
I had planned to reuse the seals after cleaning them up and adding copper RTV to them, but from what I read and how one of the seals turned out, it was out of the question. Good thing I bought a set of Toyota seals just in case.
There has been a lot of speculation as to what caused the epic fail. Everything from the bolts that SURE included to installation error. I may have installed them incorrectly the first time, so this time I made sure to torque the crows foot down to 25 ft-lbs.
Lesson learned from this? Well, I guess don't buy SURE Halos, but also, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If you don't have signs that the seals are failing, maybe they don't need to be replaced.
I'm really glad I decided to take it apart to see for myself. For those of you that want more info, you can visit the link below:
http://www.mazdaspeedforums.org/forum/f595/sure-halos-injectos-seals-failing-129999/