The owner of the E60 with the N53 series engine approached me. He complained that the engine is vibrating, especially during the cold weather. The injector of cylinder No.5 has been replaced recently. A professionally restored piezo injector from a reliable seller has been installed.
Here is what the “reliable” injector looks like.
As you can see, the original inscriptions are taped up – obviously, something was done with the injector. But, what is the most strange – the encoding data aren’t changed! How so?
Here, the flow rate adaptations of this injector of the 5th cylinder in Homogenous mode. Completely incorrect!
In this menu, we can see, that even the electric parameters of this injector are strongly different from the other injectors. Yes, in other cylinders the injectors of the 11th release are installed – the parameters should be identical!
The most interesting part we can see is if we look closer at the descriptions of this injector.
Below the inscriptions, we can see that it is actually the *048 injector of the actual – 11th release.
But – let’s check the manufacturing data. The last two digits are the manufacturing date. The last digit is 8. So, the second digit from the end could be 1 or 2. But…
The second digit from the end is…3! The injector was produced on the 38th day of the month!
What does this calendar “mistake” mean? This means only one thing – this injector is a cheap China fake.
Here, we can find the “catalogue” on the webpage of the seller. Yes, it turns out that Vitesco Technologies has actually started to sell “original” injectors. Soon, the NOx sensors will be available, too. Taking into account that in the civilized world, there is only one manufacturer who produces “heads” for the NOx sensors (and it is NTK), it becomes clear that these sensors, too, will be fakes in China. How these fake sensors perform in the case of BMW can be read here.
Here, this is the actual offer! Isn’t it excellent? EUR 458! It’s almost the same price as for a new (ok, more precisely – refurbished by manufacturer) injector from BMW AG!
The largest paradox is that Vitesco Technologies is the ex-company of the Continental group (a division, that separated several years ago), and it has 35’000 employees! For a longer time, I was sure, that this was a scam at the international level, but no – it looks like this mega company actually exists.
You can make your own conclusions, but mine are – the situation is harsh. A huge international company sells China fakes! It is something (previously) unimaginable!
