22re in my 85 celica is smoking like a freight train. Thought head gasket at first but smells like raw gas. Plugs wet as hell with gas. How often do the fuel pressure regulators go out. I have had a bunch of 22r and re's and never had one go bad. Thoughts?+

 

That's strange.. I had a '93 Truck 4WD Deluxe 5-speed with the 22R-E and W56 tranny that had a similar issue. Fixed it by replacing the Throttle Position Sensor, Mass Airflow Sensor and resetting the ECU. Also put in new plugs and air filter, she was fine after that... Hope that helps. Keep us updated...

 

Put a new cap and rotor and two plugs,because i screwed up and only ordered two. Cut the smoke in half or more. Done a compression check and all cylinders were 160ish psi.

 

Well uh.. Test don't guess!

There are two paths that come to mind here.

The first is uninvasive, mostly, put a pressure guage on the fuel line. On the 22re of this era "we" usually tap into the cold start injector and run the fuel pump via the diagnostics connection. If your fuel psi is "off the chart" you know the regulator is stuck in a closed position.

The second is a bit more invasive since it requires pulling your plenum (upper intake.) and checking for a stuck open or leaking injector. With the upper intake removed you can fish something into the intake runners (a bit of paper like a section of brown paper bag) then run the fuel pump via the diagnostics port. A good result is no color change or wetting of the test strip.

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After this it gets into things like injection times (AFR), ignition (spark) voltage, fouled plugs and so on.

You don't give much detail about the smoke. (What does it look like? What does it smell like? We can't see smell or feel it from here and rely on your description.) You touched upon fuel but it could be oily and watery as well as unburnt fuel all at the same time..

You can guage some of this by the appearance of the sparkplugs. Burnt oil is black and hard. Coolant shows bright steam cleaned surfaces. Excessive fueling shows thin sooty residue. If you have all three it's a sort of brown wet hard mess!

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Your direct question was about how often the regulator fails. The answer is meh, not that often in "normal" circumstances.. If it was left to dry out it can cause issues with the diaphragm. If your fuel filter bypassed some crusty crud it's going to stick open which is counter to your symptoms. If it had old tarnished fuel it will tend to just stick in a random position.

If your not sure what it's doing ask it. Hey bro are you stuck open (what volume does it return to the tank)? Hey bro are you stuck closed (what fuel pressure do you see on the fuel rail)? Hey bro are you starving for fuel (the previous two tests while running the engine..)?


=D Test!

 

Like i said in my previous reply,compression is at about 160 all cylinders. The smoke is,was like a head gasket smoke but smells like raw gas,which led me to a fuel delivery problem. Car had sat for a few years,so sorta leaning towards the regulator or injectors. Gotta get a couple more plugs and see if those help,probably fouled.

 

You can check the fuel pressure regulator by pulling the vacuum line off and see if it revs up. It sends the extra gas back to the fuel tank. I would say the air flow meter is bad. I know from experience with the early Z cars, when the air temp sensor inside the air flow meter goes bad, it will flood the engine.

 

I'd probably clean up the old sparkplugs and leave those in for the first tank of fuel and toss in a bottle of injector cleaner. Then an oxygen sensor and fresh set of plugs as well as a Toyota PCV valve, to finish off the "tune up". Based on the "is/was" and your two new plugs having a dramatic effect on indetermined smoke, it just needs a bit of love after sitting.

The failed fuel pressure regulators that I recall where flowing fuel out the vacuum line due to bad membranes. For what that's worth.