NHTSA Update on CR HPFP failure investigation

It's possible that the majority of dealers that stiff customers are doing it because their regional managers want to lower warranty claims.

ZiggyTheHamster said:

It's possible that the majority of dealers that stiff customers are doing it because their regional managers want to lower warranty claims.

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Bingo, too much in warranty claims brings down the men in black into the dealership for an audit. We have turned many cars away, had a customer come back 2x for a leaky trans case on a 07 TL. They cut back labor times, and good luck getting anything from the manufacturer. I don't work for VW.

I'm listening to this because it's holding my wife back from buying a CR TDi. I would love to hear there is a fix.... But this will end the same way Bosch HPFP problem has on the 3.0 twin turbo gasser BMW, no fix.

Following the thread closely. Hopefully we get a recall, new redesigned HPFP's in all of our TDI's and in the 11's going forward and we can put this problem to bed.

GoFaster said:

I found a confirmation for the differing lubricity standard in Canada. See question 19 in this question-and-answer document.

http://www.believeinit.ca/userfiles/pdf/ULSD_Q&A_e.pdf

The wear scar limit is 460, which is in line with the recommendations of fuel injection equipment manufacturers (including Bosch, the manufacturer of that infamous HPFP), in line with standards elsewhere in the world, and more stringent than the US limit of 520.

To ME, it is sounding more and more like the USA needs to change its standard to match the rest of the world. Good luck with that.

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If the US fuel standard is the problem I would expect to see similar problems with the Duramax, Powerstroke and the Cummins in pick ups. I also own an 08 Duramax and frequent those forums as well as this one. HPFP failures are not prevalent there. It would seem to me if a company(VW) is going to market a product in a given market then they need to make it suitable for that market and not blame the fuel for inherent shortcomings in their product. There are plenty of the CR systems on the previously mentioned pick ups with hundreds of thousands of miles without this type of failure. I say BS on blaming the US fuel standard.

DasTeknoViking said:

I'm listening to this because it's holding my wife back from buying a CR TDi. I would love to hear there is a fix.... But this will end the same way Bosch HPFP problem has on the 3.0 twin turbo gasser BMW, no fix.

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It sounds like this is a Bosch problem. VAG needs to get serious with their vendor AND do a much better job with the customer relations.

Old news: new heat

According to The Detroit News, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is turning up the heat on its investigation into faulty Volkswagen fuel pumps. The administration has announced that it is currently looking into 97,272 diesel Volkswagen and Audi vehicles after receiving a total of 160 complaints about the issue. NHTSA says that in roughly half of those complaints, the bad pumps resulted in an engine stall on the highway or in traffic that prevented the engine from being restarted. Even so, no major accidents have been attributed to the faulty pumps, though one minor fender-bender has been reported as a result of the issue.
http://www.autoblog.com/2011/02/11/report-nhtsa-investigation-into-100-000-vw-and-audi-diesels-int/

If gasoline contamination is such an issue, why would they market such a sensitive pump in the U.S.? I believe automotive fuel is shipped and/or pumped through lines that carry both diesel and gasoline, so some cross-contamination is likely. Knowing that, a pump that sensitive to a tiny bit of gas should not be marketed in the U.S.

Engineering analysis

Any idea how long does "Engineering analysis" by NHTSA take to conclude and what kind of tests do they do?

TornadoRed said:

The number of incidents is too small to justify a recall. But VWoA needs to take care of this and not deny warranty coverage for replacement of this part.

It's actually a major blunder by VW -- they should have just told the dealers to replace the parts and not try to stiff the customers. The bad publicity is more costly than the parts and labor for these ~200 TDIs.

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Their response is exactly the kind of thing that will stop them from making the massive increase in sales over the next few years that they want.

Just wait until this sh*t hits the 2012 Passat fan......

I was thinking about going for a trip to USA, but my Canadian car might suffer an HPFP failure as a result of a fillup at a station in the States. Then VW Canada will deny deny deny any issue in Canada, and turn a blind eye to any reports from the NHTSA. When I talked to my techs recently at my dealership they said "what HPFP failures are you talking about??????".

Imagine a warranty claim being denied because of a failure by the consumer to heed warnings of entering and fueling up in USA.

in my last job, i was part of a product marketing team that was responsible for product launches. in such business, deadlines must be met in order to hit shelf dates, etc. in the process, revisions of components of the product are designated Rev90, Rev 91, Rev92, etc, and promoted through the SAP release management process until a full release at Rev A level. Engineering checks and balances and MQA process must be completed in whole in order to promote a revision of a component from Rev9x to Rev A (production release). However, there are some instances where a deviation is raised (usually at a marketing level) that bypasses a Rev A release process, in order to hit a milestone or deadline. MQA processes may not be completed in whole, Trial Run process may not be completed in whole, etc. A small batch of product may eventually return with failures in the field, and in turn, product lifecycle processes should quickly remedy any issues in the field, with products exchanged with RMA. This however is obviously not the case for vehicles. Parts get exchanged only.

What NHTSA should identify is whether any part of the fuel system in the CR TDI design was released under a Rev 9x level, and determine if any component remains under a Rev 9x level (while the full production BOM is at a Rev A level under deviation).

And likewise, NHTSA should identify if Bosch has their HPFP production BOM at a Rev A level under engineering deviation.

What about 2011's

My wife has a 2010 Jetta TDI Sedan, manufactured 7/10. I have a 2011 Jetta Sportwagen TDI manufactured 7/10. Two different model years built the same month. It would seem like we wouldn't have the 11/10 revision to the pump (the latest change.) I would hope that if there was a recall, that it would target all model years that have the deficient part.

On a side note, if Bosch documentation lists the 460 scar rating as the max and US fuel is specified to a 520 max rating. It can't get much clearer that the part is deficient per US standards. I would imagine there is some leeway given to the 460 rating, but even 10% above still puts you below the US standard

Irrespective of fuel contamination, that just seems like an obvious issue.

The 460 rating is an absolute maximum, no leeway - Bosch recommends 400, actually.

how do we know the "stall" complaints are HPFP and not the iced intercooler (water in the intake)?
maybe NHTSA should look at the complaint data and zip code to determine the temperature and weather conditions during the failure.

gumaku1 said:

how do we know the "stall" complaints are HPFP and not the iced intercooler (water in the intake)?
maybe NHTSA should look at the complaint data and zip code to determine the temperature and weather conditions during the failure.

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That wouldn't account for the metal flakes and destruction of parts inside the HPFP. The inter-cooler has no relationship to the fuel injection system. It is part of the forced air induction system. It takes compressed heated air and cools it to increase its density.

The symptoms would be different too with hydro-locking being the main failure and a likelihood of connecting rods being bent in the event of high levels of liquid being introduced into the cylinders.

Absolute Diesel said:

Hopefully we get a recall, new redesigned HPFP's in all of our TDI's and in the 11's going forward and we can put this problem to bed.

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There is no way VW is going to replace everyone's HPFP as a preventative measure. At this time the failure rates aren't steep enough for them to be forced to do so, either. There will be a certain amount of goodwill and a secret warranty from VW if you have a pump crap out that was from the weak production run. That's the cheapest way for VW to handle this.

A year or two from now, we will know that Bosch and VW were scrambling behind the scenes to fix this with the late 2010 and 2011 cars. The "revisions" of the fuel pumps probably include additional hardening of the pump cam, plunger roller and plunger with possible application of anti-friction coatings.

I know that the 2011 cars don't have as many miles on them, but this problem seems to be going away with the pump revisions.

The dealer ship were I bought my car uses TDI as loners.I guess a couple put of customers put gas in them.Now they a magnet that say diesel fuel only in bright letters.

MonsterTDI09 said:

The dealer ship were I bought my car uses TDI as loners.I guess a couple put of customers put gas in them.Now they a magnet that say diesel fuel only in bright letters.

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What kind of nut a that dealership gave out TDI's as loners?

Well...

bhtooefr said:

The 460 rating is an absolute maximum, no leeway - Bosch recommends 400, actually.

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I'd love to see how that goes in an engineering review. It's akin to selling a gasoline car advertised as requiring regular gas, then later finding out if you don't use >100 octane racing fuel it may cause serious damage to the engine. (I'm sure someone will have an issue with this analogy but...)

I'm not sure how the NHTSA can just ignore that fact. The VW CR engine hasn't been out long enough to get a good long term sampling of pump failure rates. Given the manufacturer says is must be less than a 460 scar rating and US specification is 520 (and lubricity isn't labeled at the pump like octane is for gas, so there's no way for a consumer to know), I just don't see how that gets past an NHTSA engineering review. (Granted you could make the argument that it shouldn't have made it past internal VW reviews.)

I'm probably oversimplifying this, but if the pump by design can't handle US diesel and subsequent wear can lead to catastrophic failure (and catastrophic failures are happening), the how could the NHTSA write that off?

tsdevine said:

I'd love to see how that goes in an engineering review. It's akin to selling a gasoline car advertised as requiring regular gas, then later finding out if you don't use >100 octane racing fuel it may cause serious damage to the engine. (I'm sure someone will have an issue with this analogy but...)
I'm not sure how the NHTSA can just ignore that fact. The VW CR engine hasn't been out long enough to get a good long term sampling of pump failure rates. Given the manufacturer says is must be less than a 460 scar rating and US specification is 520 (and lubricity isn't labeled at the pump like octane is for gas, so there's no way for a consumer to know), I just don't see how that gets past an NHTSA engineering review. (Granted you could make the argument that it shouldn't have made it past internal VW reviews.)
I'm probably oversimplifying this, but if the pump by design can't handle US diesel and subsequent wear can lead to catastrophic failure (and catastrophic failures are happening), the how could the NHTSA write that off?

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The engineers at Bosch and VW aren't idiots. What's likely the issue here is that the pump that was re-engineered to be compatible with US fuel lubricity standards, however that engineering effort just didn't work out as well as it was intended to, hence the redesigns.

This theory would probably shed some light on why the pump that is installed in engines destined for the European market has a different part number.

dzcad90 said:

The engineers at Bosch and VW aren't idiots. What's likely the issue here is that the pump that was re-engineered to be compatible with US fuel lubricity standards, however that engineering effort just didn't work out as well as it was intended to, hence the redesigns.
This theory would probably shed some light on why the pump that is installed in engines destined for the European market has a different part number.

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True, but if you and I can figure that out.....given the number of revisions that have been made to the pump, you'd think the NHTSA review process would figure that out as well. I just find it hard to believe it would just sweep that under the carpet.

dzcad90 said:

The engineers at Bosch and VW aren't idiots. What's likely the issue here is that the pump that was re-engineered to be compatible with US fuel lubricity standards, however that engineering effort just didn't work out as well as it was intended to, hence the redesigns.

This theory would probably shed some light on why the pump that is installed in engines destined for the European market has a different part number.

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Which makes me wonder if Euro spec HPFPs were built into a small number of US or North American bound TDI engines

When talking about the wear scar rating.. are we sure this is what applies to our pump? Being an international company, I can see BOSCH wants everyone at 400-460, but still designs a pump that more or less runs on our crappy fuel. I haven't seen any specifications for our pump (perhaps I should call a BOSCH distributor in the area). That has to be the difference between the non-US and the US pumps (perhaps it's non-North America and North America - I have no data from Canada).

Also... To me, the fuel pump in any car is a wear item. It will eventually fail. I've had fuel pumps in at least 3 cars fail (granted, these were my dad's cars, since I wasn't old enough to drive then). It happens. Why didn't VW design the fuel system such that a failure can't take out the entire system (granted screens won't help much with metal flakes)? Does anyone know if VW revised the design of the system in the MkVIs?

dzcad90 said:

The engineers at Bosch and VW aren't idiots. What's likely the issue here is that the pump that was re-engineered to be compatible with US fuel lubricity standards, however that engineering effort just didn't work out as well as it was intended to, hence the redesigns.
This theory would probably shed some light on why the pump that is installed in engines destined for the European market has a different part number.

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You said it just before I posted it... That's what I think too

LRTDI said:

Which makes me wonder if Euro spec HPFPs were built into a small number of US or North American bound TDI engines

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Not from my data so far.

From an earlier post in this thread, I thought the difference in part numbers was only at VW and the Bosch part number was the same for both markets, did I understand correctly? If so, this can't be a mixed up production line issue. In any case, unless there was a really significant difference in cost per unit, I'd be surprised if Bosch/VW/Audi would carry two lines of different pumps, it costs money to do so...

The BOSCH part number is different between the two pumps (non-US, US). Same model number though.

Spiegel.de. Germany's biggest magazine (akin to TIME here) mentioned the investigation on their website today.
http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/0,1518,745232,00.html

But - What if ????

Here is a question... What if VW were to admit the problem and/or the government forced a recall of all of our cars today? Would VW have a solution? Is the current pump model the one we want or will there be several more upgrades until they get it right?

Jedadiah said:

Spiegel.de. Germany's biggest magazine (akin to TIME here) mentioned the investigation on their website today.
http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/0,1518,745232,00.html

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VW is still blaming gasoline-contaminated fuel as the only problem, even to their home audience. I'm not sure what previous 2010 fuel line re-call this article refers to at the end. . . my German's pretty rusty and the Google translator was not very precise.

oilbug said:

I'd be surprised if Bosch/VW/Audi would carry two lines of different pumps, it costs money to do so...

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I don't see them producing two different spec pumps either. It's worth mentioning that quality control of ULSD in the U.S. probably wasn't all that great in the beginning and still might not be that great now; particularly with regard to wear scar rating. Europe probably has a leg up in Diesel fuel quality which could explain why pumps don't seem to fail in Europe as much.

In the early days of ULSD, it seems as if we had to rely on some "Bubba" at a fuel terminal to add enough precious lubricity additive to get our fuel to an unimpressive 520. A 460 rating is obviously better. A HPFP would probably operate for 30 years with 300 scar rating fuel. What wear scar rating does fuel have with no lubricity added at the terminal? 1000? 1500?