In the video, Destin from Smarter Every Day takes the audience on an enlightening journey exploring the world of fuel injectors, using a tractor as a case study. He contrasts fuel injectors with carburetors, emphasizing the differences in their working principles, while immersing viewers in slow-motion footage to underline how fuel injectors spray fuel into an engine. This visual exploration enhances understanding and shows the evolution of fuel injector technology.

Viewers can expect to deepen their understanding about the relevance and importance of fuel injectors, particularly within the context of tractor parts and their role in engine performance. Destin collaborates with industry professionals such as his friend Dean from Cross Creek Tractor to illustrate the intricacies of fuel injectors and their testing methods, providing rich educational content and insights into agricultural machinery maintenance.

Main takeaways from the video include:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. carburetor [ˈkɑrbjəˌreɪtər] - (n.) - A device in an internal combustion engine for mixing air with a fine spray of liquid fuel. - Synonyms: (fuel mixer, air-gas mixer, carb.)

The wonderful thing about a carburetor is that as the piston draws in the air, that fuel is pulled up into the venturi, and then it particulates the fuel as it goes down into the cylinder.

2. venturi [vɛnˈtʊri] - (n.) - A narrowed tube in which fluids are accelerated passing through, increasing velocity but decreasing pressure, essential in carburetors for mixing air and fuel. - Synonyms: (constriction, narrowing, channel.)

And then there's this venturi on top.

3. fuel injector [ˈfjuːəl ɪnˈʤɛktər] - (n.) - A device that sprays fuel into the combustion chambers of an engine to facilitate effective combustion. - Synonyms: (injector, spray nozzle, sprayer.)

Fuel injectors work differently.

4. cnc machining [siː ɛn ˈsiː mæˈʃiːnɪŋ] - (n.) - A process used in manufacturing that involves the use of computers to control machine tools, allowing for precision production of parts. - Synonyms: (computer-aided manufacturing, automated machining, CNC milling.)

He now has a full cnc machining operation where they make totally new parts for tractors.

5. combustion [kəmˈbʌstʃən] - (n.) - The process of burning something, where the fuel is oxidized and energy is produced in the form of heat and light. - Synonyms: (burning, flame, oxidation.)

If you get too much on one side, you get an uneven combustion.

6. stoichiometry [ˌstɔɪkiˈɒmətri] - (n.) - The calculation of reactants and products in chemical reactions, often referring to the ideal gas or fuel to air ratios for combustion. - Synonyms: (ratios, chemical mathematics, chemical calculation.)

Just like the stoichiometry is changing radially out from the center of the injector.

7. hydraulic pump [haɪˈdrɒlɪk pʌmp] - (n.) - A device that converts mechanical power into hydraulic energy by moving fluid through the system to enable work like lifting or pressure checks. - Synonyms: (fluid pump, pressure pump, hydraulic booster.)

It's basically a hydraulic pump that has a gauge on it.

8. atomization [ˌætəmɪˈzeɪʃən] - (n.) - The process of breaking up a liquid into small droplets, usually necessary in fuel burning processes for efficient combustion. - Synonyms: (misting, vaporization, spray formation.)

It's vaporizing the fuel, atomizing the fuel more.

9. compression [kəmˈprɛʃən] - (n.) - The process of reducing the volume of a gas or fuel mixture in an engine cylinder to increase pressure, leading to ignition in diesel engines. - Synonyms: (squeezing, compacting, constricting.)

It's the compression and the hot gases being compressed that it makes it all explode.

10. direct injection [dɪˈrɛkt ɪnˈʤɛkʃən] - (n.) - A technology in which fuel is injected directly into the combustion chamber of an engine. - Synonyms: (straight injection, chamber injection, targeted injection.)

So, like direct injection, fuel injection, there's more stuff, too

Why Fuel Injectors are AWESOME (28,000 fps Slow Mo) Part 1 - Smarter Every Day 281

You remember in an earlier video, we talked about how carburetors work? We made this see through carburetor, and you can see that there's a bowl, there's the float, there's a needle, and then there's this venturi on top. And the wonderful thing about a carburetor is that as the piston draws in the air, that fuel is pulled up into the venturi, and then it particulates the fuel as it goes down into the cylinder. The slow motion was amazing. Well, today on smarter. Every day, since we know so much about carburetors, let's go find the carburetor on this old tractor.

All right, let's go over to this side of the engine. Gotta open this thing up here and check this out. I did this earlier. This mechanism is so cool. Check this out. The engine is up under the battery here. And the first time I tried this, I took the battery out like an idiot. But the way you actually do it is this, which is beautiful. Okay, so this is the top of the engine. And you'll notice there's not, like, a carburetor looking thing here. Like, I don't have a bowl of float and a needle or any of that. I've just got pipes going straight in to the top of the engine right here. You see that? It says, firing order, one, two, three. So this is a three cylinder engine.

Those things right there. Let's zoom in. That is a fuel injector. And you're smart. You read the title to this video, and you know that we're about to do something awesome. We're about to look at a fuel injector in slow motion to see it spray. Kind of like the carburetor when it misted the fuel and the air and mixed it up. Fuel injectors work differently. And I happen to have a buddy that legit owns a tractor parts company. And we're about to go check this out in slow motion. Let's go get smarter every day.

This is my buddy, Dean. He owns Cross Creek tractor, and he does all kinds of tractor parts. What do you do? Mainly tractor parts. Dude, you're getting everything out of that. So, Dean started his business years ago doing tractor salvage, right? Yeah. So this is. You're getting every usable part off this thing, ain't you? And so, look at all this. All these used tractors back in here. Are most of them scrap? Yeah. Cross Creek tractor is an amazing place. They refurbish parts from this huge graveyard of old tractors, and it's incredible to see what they're doing. But Dean has taken it to the next level. He now has a full cnc machining operation where they make totally new parts for tractors as old as the 1940s, all the way up to the newer models. These parts allow people to keep their tractors running, which is really important for a lot of people all over the world. And I absolutely love seeing that made in America sticker. Cross creek sticks on their boxes.

I love that. I'm gonna be manufacturing some stuff soon, so I'm excited to do that myself. Anyways, whenever I come around, Dean's always talking about how he's making tractor parts. He's not making rocket parts. Don't let him fool you. He's doing some really awesome stuff. My old friend Jacob works there, and we got to work setting up a little experiment to explore some tractor fuel injectors.

All right, so we're in the shop. This is my buddy, Jacob. Cross creek tractor. So, we understand carburetors at this point, they create a vacuum pressure that pulls in fuel from the bowl and vaporizes it. But injectors are different, right? That's right. They're totally different system. It's a forced fuel injection. Okay, so these are different types of fuel injectors. And you were telling me. I've already forgotten. I know. This is international. Correct. What's this? Kubota, Massey Ferguson, John Deere Ford.

Okay, so these are all different types of injectors. These two are new, and these are sold here at Cross Creek tractor. Get your tractor parts@crosscreektractor.com. dot I'm assuming that's your website. Always. That is. That is the correct website. Jacob and I go way back. You were on smarter every day. Like episode 20 something. Vortex shitting. Okay, so what we have here is a way to demonstrate a fuel injector.

I'm gonna turn the phantom off. It's a little bit loud. So this is a tester used to test fuel injectors, right? Correct. And how does it work? All right. It's basically a hydraulic pump that has a gauge on it. It works sort of like a floor jack. You would shut off your valve, attach the injector just a little bit. Okay, my bad. I'm sorry. I did not blend it through. Dude, I'm sorry. That's okay. But then you hook the injector up to it. Then you continue to pump that until you build the pressure that it takes to overcome the spring tension in the injector. And then you would check.

So it's like a check valve? Just like a check valve inside there, you overcome the spring tension, moves the plunger, releases the fuel. You check what pressure it pops off at. And the pattern. Can we hook one up? We sure can. All right, which one is this? You're going to this one. We'll start out with the international. Okay. And not to use crude language or anything here, but it looks like a little. Like a nipple at the end with little holes in it. And that pattern dictates what kind of spray pattern you get inside the engine.

So what does an ideal pattern look like on a fuel injector? The ideal pattern is going to be even throughout all of the holes. As you pointed out, at the end of the injectors, if you've got four ports on there, you're going to want to see fuel coming out of all four ports of those. You want it to come out in a even, almost even burst, where it will be evenly distributed inside the cylinder. If you get too much on one side, you get an uneven combustion. Like, if you get too much fuel on one side of the cylinder, it won't burn complete, on the other side, won't burn complete.

And you'll end up with, you know, black exhaust smoke, incompletely burned fuel, poor fuel economy, and eventually engine failure. So, basically, you'll have a rich side of the engine and a lean side. A lean side. And so that affects temperature and stuff like that. That's interesting, because on the carburetor, everything happens upstream from the inlet. Okay, so here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get this slow mo video here, and we're gonna look at the nozzle.

Fuel injection systems are super, super high speed. Like, crazy high speed. So in order to see this, we flip that light on behind you, we're gonna backlight these things, and we're gonna try to get some nozzle spray patterns using the phantom. Here we go. So we set up a bucket to catch fuel as it sprays out of the injector, and we dialed in the lighting. We wanted to start with this old injector from an international tractor to see if this thing was still working.

And we got a little leak, but it'll work. Yep. 3210. Wow, look at all that fuel. It was super, super smoky in a good way. Yep. Come check us out. This slow mo is deceiving because it looks like you're just watching liquid come out of a little bitty hole. But if you look down here, that timing is in milliseconds this event is extremely fast.

Is that good? That is a not great pattern, that one. You could probably see some misfiring issues on that because it's. Because it's not a uniform stream. What pressure did it pop off at? That one popped off at 22 50. You would have liked to have seen more uniform streams on that. Right. More of a uniform mist out of the end of it. All right. Should we try a new one? Yep. How old would you say that injector is? That injector right there was probably from the late sixties, early seventies.

So fuel injector technology is pretty old. Pretty old. Really pretty old. And this is the old injector you're taking off and the adapter to fit it to the injector tester. What is this from? That's a kubota. Kubota. All right, ready? Yep. Yep. So it's. You're having to put some force to it. Well, I mean, you're building 3000. This particular one looks like it's about 3100 psi. So you're literally, I mean, you're using hydraulic pressure, so it's not like you're lifting 3000 pounds. But, yes, you got to put a pretty good amount of pressure on it, too.

All right, let's look at that one. How's that one look? This one is a much better pattern than the one we saw on the last go around. There were more individual streams coming out of the other one. So it's going to give you incomplete combustion. As you can see in this one, it's vaporizing the fuel, atomizing the fuel more. So you're going to get that more even combustion inside the cylinder. So this is going to burn more efficiently? Yes. All around. Everything about this is better all around. You're going to get that even heating in the chamber, and that's going to be a better fuel burn.

So this is an ideal, maybe not ideal, but it's much better. Okay, so we filmed a lot more of these fuel injectors in slo mo, and it was amazing to see the different approaches to delivery and vaporization of the fuel in an attempt to maximize power and performance. A lot of these things have four streams that shoot out radially, which is really fun to watch. I love looking at these things, knowing that this can happen up to thousands of times a minute inside an engine. This is fascinating.

Thank you very much, Jacob. Thank you. Appreciate it. I didn't blow it up. All right, this should go without saying, but do not try what I'm about to do at home, even if you have really cool safety glasses. All right. Turns out you can buy these fuel injector testers on the Internet for pretty cheap. In true redneck fashion, I have a propane torch duct taped to a stick with that flame tip being right at the end of a fuel injector. This is one of those that's got the four tips on it like it has four streams of fuel.

So let's catch some slow motion. We'll go 6000 frames per second. One, two, three. Okay. All right, let's look at that. Wow. Oh, man. Okay. Okay, here's what I learned here. When I first started squirting it, it was just liquid, just like a solid stream. But it wasn't until the correct vaporization or the cloudiness, if you will. It wasn't until that started that it actually lit fire. So that's key to combustion. You gotta have the right surface area of the fuel to the air. And of course, you gotta have spark.

So, okay, we didn't light one of the streams, but let's try it again. Let's see if we can get all four to, like. I have a mega fire extinguisher, just so you know. All right, here we go. One, two, three. Okay. Yeah. I've got to go get a better torch. Okay. Acetylene torch and melting that. Ready? One, two, three. No, we only got three. Okay, I'm starting to understand this. I can't see the camera. There's so much light.

Just like the stoichiometry is changing radially out from the center of the injector. And so it's. Yeah, think about it. Boundary conditions. Right at the little exit, it's 100% fuel. Way out into infinity, it's 100% air. Somewhere in between, there's a boundary, it's a gradient. And so there's an optimum mixture point somewhere between nozzle exit and getting out into the air. So there's this radial boundary that it can't back burn into. And I don't know what you call that, but we just saw it.

So it's like the fuel and the air have to agree that. Okay, now it's time to burn to. And the fire is trying to run backwards, but it can't quite get there because the stoichiometry goes back to fuel rich. Very interesting. I want to point out one thing that has just occurred to me. So I am using a torch to light off the fuel on these diesel fuel injectors. But that's not how this would work inside a diesel engine. And I got these really cool old books to show you why.

So, in this one, there's a really cool graphic showing the difference between a gasoline engine and a diesel gasoline. On the right here, you can see we have a spark plug that acts like the torch I'm using. It provides the flame which propagates from one side to the other. But with a true diesel engine, it would be more like this. It's the compression and the hot gases being compressed that it makes it all explode. That's how a diesel engine works. So that's probably more what these fuel injectors are actually seeing.

Another thing I want to point out is there's many different types of fuel injection. Like, we're talking about direct fuel injection right now, which is basically injecting the fuel directly into the cylinder. That requires really high pressures. But there's also a method called the port injection method, where you can have the fuel injector upstream of the intake valve. And then when you open that valve, you can squirt in there, and that requires lower pressure. So my point is, fuel injection is complicated.

And we will talk about some of these other methods in a future video. Here's what I want to do right now. I want to transition from these quad nozzles. I'll call them, I don't know what you call those to these single type sprayers, because I want to see it spray straight out. And I just think this high speed is beautiful. And I'm learning and I want to keep doing it. So, yeah, let's do some more. 20,000 frames per second. Let's see what's up.

Okay. It looks like the eye of Sauron. Look at that. It totally does. Oh, man. It is beautiful, though. That's pretty. All right. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I do. This is amazing. So, like direct injection, fuel injection, there's more stuff, too. There's throttle body. There's electronic fuel injection. There's port injection. We're going to learn about all that. I have filmed all this stuff already. I've just got to make the video.

And so a huge thanks to everybody that supports on Patreon. You'll notice there's not a sponsor on this video because Patreon is how I made this thing happen. So super duper. Thank you. I will shout out a company, though. My buddy Dean. He has cross Creek tractor. Crosscreektraktor.com. yeah, that's the deal. Call Jacob and blow his phone up. Making have a hard week next week. So basically, you guys sell parts that like electrical parts. All the stuff is new. You do used everything, right? Everything, yeah. New. Used top to bottom.

And you do old stuff and you manufacture new stuff as well? We do, yes. Yeah. So if you got an old tractor, you need it run. Crosscreetractor.com. i never thought we'd be here. Did you think we'd be here? I never thought we'd be here. I remember the bottle rocket in the brush pile. Yeah. That's where it all began. That is where it all began. Like, 20 years ago or something. Really. Probably should have gone into entertainment before. I mean, you have such a presence. Crosscreektractor.com I'm gonna cut this off before they say something I don't want you to hear.

Technology, Education, Innovation, Fuel Injection, Machinery Maintenance, Engineering, Smartereveryday