A combined needle guide, filter, and flow director for gasoline fuel injectors

A fuel injector (10), including a housing (12), an armature assembly (14), an injector needle (16), a needle seat (18), a needle guide (20), and a orifice disc (22) containing one or more orifice metering pathways (24). The needle guide (20) contains a center guide bore (26) and a plurality of filtering passageways (28). The plurality of filtering passageways (28) are used to filter fuel passing through the needle guide (20) and induce swirl in the fuel to improve atomization.