as long as the ceramic hasnt cracked, the dpf can be cleaned. also many of these are being sold in non-emissions states. so vw knows what we do with them...
Neither is VWoA.
they are backordered nation wide bud. your on a list. demand has overwhelmed the supply. as soon as they are in stock they are put on vehicles. They dont have a stock. all you can do is call the dealer and ask how far down the list you are. If your motor blows... they have to replace it. just drive it. it took over 2 months for mine to come in. and calling all the time and complaining will not get you further up the list. just call and ask what number in line you are. they normally get a shipment monthly. its NOT an ON-HAND part.
Listen man, I work for a major worldwide automotive parts manufacturer. We dont supply DPF's for VW but the following applies for nearly all oem suppliers. Demand has significantly outpaced supply in this instance, there is no big ass warehouse anywhere with piles of these parts sitting around. Parts that arent moving cost whoever is holding them money. Everybody operates just-in-time manufacturing meaning parts are made when they are needed and not before, in my facility the parts we make today are built into vehicles tomorrow, sometimes within hours. We have to run at or above 85% operating efficiency to keep up with our customers if they are running well, if we shut them down they charge us $32,000 per minute that they are down waiting on us. NOW if we have orders for replacement (i.e. service) parts we have to fit that into the regular production schedule. If that order is for an old revision level part (i.e. for your 2014 car and we are building 2020my parts.) we may have to shut a line down for minor retooling to make that service run and then stop and retool again to run normal production. All of this costs time that we usually don't have so these service parts are many times delayed because regular production always trumps service parts. The penalties for delayed service parts are far less than the $32k per minute price tag of shutting down our customers assembly line. NOW throw 3 month long COVID shutdown into the mix and the resulting slow ramp up and and oem's chomping at the bit to get their facilities back up to 100% capacity and that means service production is a back burner item for EVERYBODY. That doesn't mean we don't care, my facility prides itself on or 100% on time completion for service orders with both of our customers for over a year now but Im trying to illustrate how once behind its nigh impossible to catch up.
I wouldnt call TDI's "profitable" especially after dieselgate (especially here in the US). Most of these DPF's are being replaced under warranty which means VW loses money on every single one they have to cover. They still have to pay their supplier to make the damn thing because their people don't work for free. Suppliers won't stay running long after the new car assembly lines shut down. There just isn't enough money in making JUST the service parts and nowhere to put them after they are built (remember there are no big warehouses when you operate just-in-time lean manufacturing). The car companies make most of their money off of new car sales and the interest on financing those sales to buyers. Thats why new vehicle production is priority 1.
why cant you run at 100 percent efficiency?
Lots of reasons, robots break down, programming issues, maintenance, weld cap changes, people coming back from break late, people out sick so someone has to run two stations instead of one, training new people, quality issues (sometimes investigating a quality problem requires temporary line stoppages). Operational efficiency is calculated with operators hitting their targets (part placement in a station in a specific time frame) every single time, a second here and there multiplied across 5 to 7 operations on each line adds up fast and eats into OEE. Most operators will have to place 2-4 parts in each station every 45 to 60 seconds, many operators are assigned to operate 2 or 3 stations at a time in a sequence, one wrong step or distraction adds seconds to their times. Some "routine" maintenance operations (like weld cap changes) are calculated into overall OEE at "expected completion times" if the task takes longer then that counts against overall OEE. It is possible to exceed 100% OEE but you need rockstar operators on the line with ZERO mistakes or slow downs or mechanical issues all day. 85% is a difficult goal to achieve, not impossible, but difficult. Even if you took the human element out of the equation you would still comtend with mechanical breakdowns which happen often, even with multi-million dollar machines. I would love to see consistent OEE's over 85% because that means a decent monetary bonus for everyone that works in the plant (in addition to safety bonuses).
WOW - Did you
I tried to keep as many miles off of it as possible, but I think I put about 900 miles on it after the light came on.