Getting the right amount of fuel into a cylinder bore during the combustion process via a set of fuel injectors relies on many different factors, and it’s critical to make sure the engine can be tuned properly. Diesel performance engines are fed a diet heavy in boost, so if they don’t get the right amount of fuel things will go wrong in a hurry and that’s where S&S Diesel Motorsport comes in. The team at S&S Diesel created this great video to help diesel owners better understand injectors.

Like so many other areas of the high-performance universe, there’re a lot of misconceptions about how fuel injectors actually work. Energizing time or pulse are two terms that can be used interchangeably to talk about when a fuel injector opens after power is applied. Another technical term used in fuel injection is injection duration — this is the time period when fuel from the injector enters the combustion area of the engine.

One of the misconceptions in the diesel world is that energizing time is the same as injection duration, which it isn’t. Andrew Stauffer from S&S does a great job breaking down the difference between these terms in this video. During his explanation, Stauffer shows how these terms and theories are applied to different injectors used in common rail fuel systems. The diagrams that Stauffer creates explain how energizing time and injection duration interact when an injector fires.

In the last part of this video, Stauffer covers why it’s important to have nozzle flows that match each other for an entire set of injectors, and why extending the end of injection is a bad practice. If you don’t have the right end of injection calculated it will make tuning your engine difficult and could lead to damage.

To learn more about high-performance fuel injection for diesel applications check out the S&S Diesel website right here.