Am I the only one who sees people reusing injector copper washers?

Watched a guy in my shop try to save $3 by putting old copper washers back on a 6.7 Powerstroke. That injector started leaking within 20 miles and washed the cylinder down. How many times do you guys see people skip crush washers just to save a few bucks?

3 comments

3 Comments

king.robin10h agoMost Upvoted

Man, I watched a guy do that once with injector washers on an old Duramax and he bragged about it like he'd discovered some life hack. Two weeks later that truck showed up on a flatbed because the injector had backed itself out and cracked the head. Copper work hardens, period. You can't just heat and quench your way out of that physics. I've even seen guys try to reuse the copper gaskets on fuel filters, which is just asking for air in the system and a whole lot of headache. Just buy new ones, it's not worth the gamble.

felix_black16h ago

Did you happen to catch if the guy at least cleaned the old washers before reusing them? I knew a mechanic who swore by heating them cherry red and quenching them to re-soften the copper, but I never trusted that trick myself.

carr.lee13h ago

Heat them cherry red and quench them, huh? Did that old mechanic ever try to explain how many times you can actually do that before the copper gets too brittle to crush down tight, or was it just a gut feeling kind of thing? I always figured once you heat copper that hot, you're messing with its grain structure in a way that a simple water quench can't fully fix, especially on something as small as a washer. Seems like the risk of a leak from a cracked washer would outweigh the savings on a ten-cent part, but maybe that's just me being paranoid.