After some reading on here last night, I decided to pull the upper intake off and see if my poor idle and rough running were caused by a leaking fuel pressure regulator (FPR). Sure enough, the passenger side of the plenum was much cleaner than the driver side, and there was some pooling of gasoline.

So, $70 later, with a new regulator and gaskets in hand, I begin the repair. All was going smoothly until I tried to tighten down the bracket that holds the regulator to the "spider." I heard a "snap" and the screw was very loose again. Apparently, plastic gets a little brittle when baked inside an engine for 237,xxx miles... The threaded hole for the screw snapped right off of the body of the injector.

Hopefully O'Reilly's will let me return the regulator. The reman'ed spider from Rock Auto already comes with one. I'll also be replacing the lines to the injector.

At least this wasn't my daily driver! I would not be so laid back about all this!

 

Don't forget to get the internal lines as well (commonly called the 'nut kit'). They don't like to get reused.

 

I'll definitely do the nut kit. That's what I meant when I said the lines to the injector. I think they might have been leaking as well; upon closer inspection it looked like there was some slight "washing" of the carbon below them.

The nut kit I'll buy new. What kind of reliability can I expect from a used spider, though? It's about $160 for the cheapest one from Rock Auto, I've seen several used on eBay for ~$80. Is it something that I would be better off to just buy new?

Also, might it be possible to repair the damaged spider? Maybe get a tap and die to thread farther down into the hole, and use a longer torx screw, and some epoxy to hold the broken piece on? I'm not trying to cheap out, just curious. Thanks for any insight.

 

I would not consider installing a used spider. Too much potential for problems.

Also, another thing to do while you are in there is replace the injector connector. It's cheap and easy to do and can stave off some real head scratching