How a fuel injection system works

Petrol-engined cars use indirect fuel injection. A fuel pump sends the petrol to the engine bay, and it is then injected into the inlet manifold by an injector. There is either a separate injector for each cylinder or one or two injectors into the inlet manifold.

Traditionally, the fuel/air mixture is controlled by the carburettor , an instrument that is by no means perfect.

Its major disadvantage is that a single carburettor supplying a four- cylinder engine cannot give each cylinder precisely the same fuel/air mixture because some of the cylinders are further away from the carburettor than others.

One solution is to fit twin-carburettors, but these are difficult to tune correctly. Instead, many cars are now being fitted with fuel-injected engines where the fuel is delivered in precise bursts. Engines so equipped are usually more efficient and more powerful than carburetted ones, and they can also be more economical, as well as having less poisonous emissions .