22/08/2016
ELECTRONIC FUEL INJECTION
Back in the day, a good ol' carburetor was responsible for sending the appropriate amount of fuel into the cylinders. Today, that job belongs to the ECU.
If the heart of a car is its engine, then its brain must be the Engine Control Unit (ECU). Also known as a Powertrain Control Module (PCM), the ECU optimizes engine performance by using sensors to decide how to control certain actuators in an engine. A car’s ECU is primarily responsible for four tasks. Firstly, the ECU controls the fuel mixture. Secondly, the ECU controls idle speed. Thirdly, the ECU is responsible for ignition timing. Lastly, in some applications, the ECU controls valve timing.
Initially, after a gas droplet enters your gas tank (which is now made of plastic), it gets sucked up by an electric fuel pump. The electric fuel pump usually comes in an in-tank module that consists of a pump, a filter, and a sending unit. The sending unit uses a voltage divider to tell your gas gauge how much fuel you have left in your tank. The pump sends the gasoline through a fuel filter, through hard fuel lines, and into a fuel rail.
A vacuum-powered fuel pressure regulator at the end of the fuel rail ensures that the fuel pressure in the rail remains constant relative to the intake pressure. For a gasoline engine, fuel pressure is usually on the order of 35-50 psi. Fuel injectors connect to the rail, but their valves remain closed until the ECU decides to send fuel into the cylinders.
Usually, the injectors have two pins. One pin is connected to the battery through the ignition relay and the other pin goes to the ECU. The ECU sends a pulsing ground to the injector, which closes the circuit, providing the injector's solenoid with current. The magnet on top of the plunger is attracted to the solenoid's magnetic field, opening the valve. Since there is high pressure in the rail, opening the valve sends fuel at a high velocity through the injector's spray tip. The duration that the valve is open- and consequently the amount of fuel sent into the cylinder- depends on the pulse width (i.e. how long the ECU sends the ground signal to the injector).
When the plunger rises, it opens a valve and the injector sends fuel through the spray tip and into either the intake manifold, just upstream of the intake valve, or directly into the cylinder. The former system is called multiport fuel injection and the latter is direct injection.