Fuel Rail Assembly

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The fuel rail assembly attaches to each cylinder head. The fuel rail distributes high pressure fuel to the fuel injectors. The fuel rail assembly consists of the following components:

The direct fuel injectors
The fuel rail pressure/temperature sensor

Fuel Injectors

The fuel injection system is a high pressure, direct injection, returnless on-demand design. The fuel injectors are mounted in the cylinder head beneath the intake ports and spray fuel directly into the combustion chamber. Direct injection requires high fuel pressure due to the fuel injector's location in the combustion chamber. Fuel pressure must be higher than compression pressure requiring a high pressure fuel pump. The fuel injectors also require more electrical power due to the high fuel pressure. The ECM supplies a separate high voltage supply circuit and a high voltage control circuit for each fuel injector. The injector high voltage supply circuit and the high voltage control circuit are both controlled by the ECM. The ECM energizes each fuel injector by grounding the control circuit. The ECM controls each fuel injector with 65 V. This is controlled by a boost capacitor in the ECM. During the 65 V boost phase, the capacitor is discharged through an injector, allowing for initial injector opening. The injector is then held open with 12 V.

The fuel injector assembly is an inside opening electrical magnetic injector. The injector has six precision machined holes that generate a cone shaped oval spray pattern. The fuel injector has a slim extended tip in order to allow a sufficient cooling jacket in the cylinder head.

Fuel Rail Pressure/Temperature Sensor

The fuel rail pressure sensor transmits fuel pressure and temperature information by serial data using the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) J2716 Single Edge Nibble Transmission (SENT) protocol. The fuel rail pressure sensor internal micro processor allows 4 separate sensor outputs from one 3 wire sensor. The Engine Control Module (ECM) supplies the fuel rail pressure sensor with a 5 V reference circuit, a low reference circuit, and an asynchronous signal/serial data circuit. The asynchronous signal means communication is only going from the fuel rail pressure sensor to the ECM. The ECM decodes the serial data signal into separate values which are displayed on a scan tool as the inputs from the Fuel Temperature Sensor, Fuel Rail Pressure Sensor and Fuel Rail Pressure Sensor 2.