Hi All, Long (long long) time lurker but never had much to contribute as these are 20 year old vehicles there aren't a lot of undiscovered tips and tricks left.. Some background. It's been cold here lately (MN - so, real, proper cold..) and the truck isn't usually my dd until winter. Went to get her ready for first snow fun times a couple weeks back, fired her up, and instantly she's running like it's a cylinder short.. I figure it's -10F ambient, so whatever, let things warm up and get moving and she'll sort herself out (always does).. Not this time. Needed to do the brake master cylinder anyways and don't have a good system for bleeding (did i mention it's cold?) so off to the mechanic she goes. Few hours later, mechanic gives me a ring and says brakes are great, but you're throwing code 51.. Fack. Injectors. Double fack. I can either spend hours in the frigid cold doing the delicate work of disassembling my air/fuel to get at the injectors or I can have the mechanic do it to the tune of $700.. Ugh. I call him back and let him know I'll take it home and start diagnosing myself and if I just can't take it i'll bite the bullet and go back. Fast forward to yesterday, finally got some time to work on it, but the cold is forcing a methodology upon me even though we are above zero again.. Start simple. Ohm meter. I did my required NPORA reading, Hanes manual, various youtube vids, etc.. Read up on all the people replacing passenger side injectors in 10 min and figure I've got a 50/50 shot that it's on the "easy" side. Pop the hood, pull the power connector for injector 1(?), closest to the fan, passenger side, touch the pins, and my ohm meter freaks out. It's jumping all over the place, 0, 200, 0, 100, 5, 35, 0.. Half the time I can't even get it to register unless I move the points around on the contact. And then I had an "AH HA!" moment.. The pins are 20 years old. They've *never* to my knowledge been unplugged. This beast has 230K on her, through every type of climate and environment this continent has to offer. I bet they have a coat of oxidation on them, which would explain why I can't get a consistent reading on the ohm meter without scraping the tips of the probes against the pins. Grabbed a Q-tip, soaked it in b10, wiped them down really good, and boom - nice steady mid-20's ohm reading. Move to cyl 3, and cyl 5, same same.. I put some dielectric grease inside the connector points of the wire harness and reassemble. Proceed through 3, and 5, cleaning the exact same way, and adding dialectric grease to the connectors. Fire it up and it idles smooth as silk. In fact, I think this might be the best this engine has *ever* run. It sounds great, no misfires, strong consistent purr.. With my new found time in the day, I decided to finally install the new idler arm and calmini brace. Boy, Calmini, you guys make some jacked up parts. Did you even try to put one in? I mean really - there is an obvious 1/4" of steel preventing it from lining up to the bolt holes properly, and the bottom of the bracket isn't square to the sides! I had to grind a 1/4" of steel off that POS.. Not going with anything calmini, ever again. Geez.
TL;DR - Injector connectors were oxidized, cleaned and greased them, truck runs better than it has in 5 years. Also, Calmini can suck it.
