My recent change of job to a company nearby, on cycling distance, caused the Vectra to be a lot less used. But that did not hold back for causing more problems. First there was an ice storm (in the f****** middle of the summer!!!) destroying the roof, hood, front left light, and front window, and than 2 days later there was suddenly this problem with injector 3. The actually problem goes like this: the engine sound is different, you hear it doesn’t run like it should, and when you drive the car it shakes and stutters and it has no power at all. Almost like driving a tractor. I took it to the garage for a readout and there they told me “injector 3 problem”. Costs to fix it: approx. € 450 for a new injector not counting the administration costs and loan of the mechanic…
O Deus
Googling around however revealed that the injector problem is actually very common for the Vectra C. Actually, it’s always injector 3 that goes first! The tale goes that because of poor ventilation on injector 3 and the process of it heating up / cooling down causes the connector to not be so tight anymore which on its own turn causes a bad contact with the injector itself. And we all know what happens when you run current through connectors that do not connect so good anymore… Here is a picture that shows you the straight difference between connectors 2 and 3:
As you can see, there is a lot more dirt around connector 3 which is on the right side (always start counting connectors/injectors from left to right). To fix it I removed the pink plastic cover surrounding the electric contacts of the connector and next take a screwdriver and press the contacts at both sides together so that they tighten again around the electric contacts inside the injector plug. Probable a short term solution as the problem will most probable return very soon already, but it’s a one minute job so it is okay to get you back on the road again. On Ebay you can find injector wiring remedy kits nowadays for £ 15, not so bad compared to the € 450+ that my car dealer first told me to pay for installing a new injector (which is not faulty at all). Vectra C injector fault remedy kit:
And this brings me again to the question: why is it so hard to display fault codes on the f****** display of the car? Reading out the car is € 25 for a 2 minute job, smells like easy money…
after hours coding 
I hit the same issue a few years ago. Fortunately I self-diagnosed with the help of some of the forums and no dealers were involved (apart from selling me the VX replacement wiring loom which uses better-designed connectors – which I duly soldered on). So I was mighty chuffed to get the car working well again for a mere £12.50 or whatever it cost. I’d suggest a simple way to check if this is your problem (no fancy code reading required) is to manually disconnect your connector to Injector no.3. If the problem doesn’t get any worse, you’ve correctly guessed/diagnosed!
If reading error codes is your thing then I can heartily recommend picking yourself up an OBD II (On-Board-Diagnostic) bluetooth adapter. They’re about £6 on eBay these days (search for OBD II or ELM327). I bought one a couple of years ago mainly for extracting data from my other car during track days but it works great for reading out (and resetting error codes too). It needs to be paired with an app (I use “Torque” on Android – about another £2.50 and well worth it), and is a piece of cake to use (OBD II port is underneath the ash tray in the centre console, for those unaware).
BTW I found your site whilst looking for an explanation for all things 1.9CDTI (got suspected perished vacuum pipes right now) so thanks for publishing this useful info.
Cheers,
Rob
Rob, I have the perished vacuum pipe issue, (amazing how much performance impact it makes !), what site did you order the vacuum pipe from ?
Taxi driver once told me a trick with a paper clip and 2 pins on the plug in your centre console and it brings up error codes on your display