NHTSA Update on CR HPFP failure investigation

GoFaster

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I know that the 2012 Passat has a different fuel pump. It is possible that this design change was to address the HPFP possibly pumping air. What's not clear from that diagram is what happens at the fuel filter and HPFP. If it has a way of relieving trapped air through the return relief valve before it gets into the HPFP, that's good. If all it does is pump the trapped air into the HPFP, it won't solve it.
 

tcp_ip_dude

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T Girl has been burning B5 fuel,but still had a hpfp failure. I also wonder about bio diesel's specs. Here is a pic of bio from a well know source. Both bottles from the same source,but evidently different batches.

That doesn't look like any of the ASTM certified stuff I order, it's always been a very consistent light golden color and very clear. Is that stuff D6751 certified?
 

T Girl

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Just to add many times my concentration of bio fuel is somewhat greater that 5%. I have an 87 F-250 6.9 that is kind of my extra vehicle although it mostly sits in semi-retirement. Have +400k on the ole girl. I have a 100 gal aluminum transfer tank in the bed which I keep B99 in. After a fill-up and I run 50 miles or so I top off with B99 to get a little more bio fuel in the mix.....I purchase the Bio-Fuel at Houston Bio-Fuel. It is spec product from virgin soy.
 

T Girl

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T Girl has been burning B5 fuel,but still had a hpfp failure. I also wonder about bio diesel's specs. Here is a pic of bio from a well know source. Both bottles from the same source,but evidently different batches.

Your car runs on orange juice and root beer? FANTASTIC! :D
 

CedarPark68

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T Girl,

One thing to ponder ... Valero has been in the news before for blowing up plenty of fuel pumps in gassers. ( South Texas )( Story is old )
Valero was supplying their own stations with fuel that had no additives what so ever.

As they are one of the largest refiners in Texas, many brands use them as their base fuel supplier in this region.


Valero owning the stations and being the refiner I take with a gain of salt.
 

T Girl

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All the oil companies have agreements with each other. I know a few years back Shell was supplying a lot of the Valero stations in the southern half of Texas and Shell was supplying their stations in the North. It has to do with logistics, refinery location, and feed stock availability. The additive packages in this situation are batched in at the jobber before the load goes out on a transport. I guess the main thing always applies to fuel weather it be gas or diesel and that is it needs to be fresh. You should always buy where the tank is being turned over a lot. As far as letting bad gas out I don't know if you remember but Shell did the same thing a few years back from a couple of their terminals. Poor QC at the terminals was found to be the problem. I think some of the bad stuff came out of Atlanta if I recall correctly. Shell paid off a lot of folks to make them happy and for the bad PR to go away. It really doesn't make a lot of difference where you buy fuel as long as it is fresh. Buy where the tanks are being turned over on a constant basis....of course it is true with gas that the majors have better additive packages than the independents. And the majors, like Shell hydro treat there gasoline. (I ran the frac section of a Hydrotreater unit for 10 years.) This is a step that is often not done by the smaller refiners because it is costly but produces a cleaner burning grade of gasoline. Concerning diesel though not a lot of difference with it since there are no additive packages. It is all made to a government mandated spec.
 

T Girl

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OOPS, I meant to say Shell was supplying some Valero stations and Valero was supplying some Shell stations in that last post, sorry it sounded a little weird. I'm on the night shift.........
 

dweisel

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dweisel isn't diesel anymore!
Just because
she had a failure when using B5 and you found a bad batch of biodiesel does not mean that ASTM spec, uncontaminated B5 won't provide more than adequate lubricity for any diesel.
It can't save a sub-standard design, though...
I was trying to point out that there can be inconsistance properties with fuel between batches whether it is UlSD or biodiesel and we really don't know what we are getting. Also B5 was what everyone was hanging their hat on as a ''it will keep my hpfp from failing'' solution. That doesn't seem to be completely true in all cases.
As far as the design. I think mechanically the design is fine,BUT the wrong materials were used.
 
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dweisel

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dweisel isn't diesel anymore!
That doesn't look like any of the ASTM certified stuff I order, it's always been a very consistent light golden color and very clear. Is that stuff D6751 certified?
That bio was at just above 32*F. Same producer different batches. It was from a well know producer that many members here use. Just because it gelled doesn't mean its bad. The main reson for the pic was to show the inconsistancy.
 

Second Turbo

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Festering Future Fun

T Girl: > They just threw all the profit they made off the sale of my car in the garbage!

Each HPFP disintegration blows the profit on at least 3 cars.

> Looks like VW would get off their butts and do something about this.

You can be sure they are beavering away on it. There are two aspects to the effort.

  1. They need to forestall future failures on new sales, both in and out of warranty.
  2. They need a fix for the installed base, also both in and out of warranty*. Even if NHTSA EA-11003 leads nowhere, the class action vultures are already circling, and sniffing for carcasses of dead Jettas.
Discussions between VW and Bosch must be "interesting" (in the Confucian sense). I'm sure VW would love to hand Bosch a $10K invoice on each failure, but that probably isn't happening. Speculative chat ... "Eat that charge yourself, VW. We designed the pump, and life-cycle tested it, to the fuel quality spec you provided. Furthermore, we had no hand in a half-vast design that ensures complete fuel system self-destruction when one component fails."
______
* The leaky moonroof on my PD resulted in a class action with post-warranty support. That was trivial annoyance compared to the HPFP.
 

tditom

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...B5 was what everyone was hanging their hat on as a ''it will keep my hpfp from failing'' solution. That doesn't seem to be completely true in all cases.
As far as the design. I think mechanically the design is fine,BUT the wrong materials were used.
And I'm pointing out that if it WERE just a lubricity issue, then B5 (B2 for that matter) would address the concern.

Materials and coatings are part of the design...
 

bhtooefr

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It could also be that improving lubricity does reduce the failure rate to very low levels, but you still get the occasional failure.

After all, a zero failure rate is almost impossible.
 

turbocharged798

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And I'm pointing out that if it WERE just a lubricity issue, then B5 (B2 for that matter) would address the concern.

Materials and coatings are part of the design...
Or just disprove the myth that bio blends increase D2 lubricity(which would not surprise me at all). There has been very little data to support bio lubricity.
 

bhtooefr

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Well, there's one way to do that in a way that's optimal for this situation.

Get a hundred or so new VW-spec HPFPs.

Run 1/3 of them on ASTM D975-compliant (but barely) fuel.

Run 1/3 of them on the same fuel, but blended with 2% ASTM D6751-compliant soy biodiesel.

Run 1/3 of them on the same fuel, but blended with 5% ASTM D6751-compliant soy biodiesel.

Run all the pumps for a test cycle equivalent to what they'd see in 250,000 miles of driving.

See which ones last the longest.

I'd say that $500,000 would fund that test, anyone want to do a Kickstarter?
 

Renurbs

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Sorry I'm sure this is answered somewhere in here but 139 pages is a lot of reading.

Does this affect 2012 golfs, or has it been resolved?

Thanks
An again sorry
 

tditom

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Or just disprove the myth that bio blends increase D2 lubricity(which would not surprise me at all). There has been very little data to support bio lubricity.
:confused:
On the contrary- there are several studies proving that biodiesel improves lubricity. If you weren't an established veteran tdiclubber I wouldn't be so surprised.

EDIT: Google "Biodiesel+lubricity" and you will come up with paper after paper proving that biodiesel improves lubricity.
 
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JSWTDI09

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Or just disprove the myth that bio blends increase D2 lubricity(which would not surprise me at all). There has been very little data to support bio lubricity.
On the contrary- there are several studies proving that biodiesel improves lubricity.
EDIT: Google "Biodiesel+lubricity" and you will come up with paper after paper proving that biodiesel improves lubricity.
It's no myth that Biodiesel CAN improve lubricity. However, it is also unproven that all biodiesel is created equal in it's ability to increase lubricity. Almost all of the studies are done with 100% virgin soy oil as the base stock. Biodiesel has also been made from many other plant and animal oil base stocks. The lubricity additive qualities (benefits) of these blends are much less well known.

Does this affect 2012 golfs, or has it been resolved?
It appears that it has been improved, but not resolved. Each new iteration of the pump seems to fail less often (as far as we can tell). However, there have been failures in 2012 models - just not as many as in the 2009s. Many of the 2012 failures were caused by filling with gasoline - but not all of them. In other words, the 2012 pumps appear to be better. However the basic fuel system design is the same, so a failure still trashes the entire fuel system from tank to injector.

Have Fun!

Don
 
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Niner

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Sorry I'm sure this is answered somewhere in here but 139 pages is a lot of reading.

Does this affect 2012 golfs, or has it been resolved?

Thanks
An again sorry
It affects the model of motor, all motors are the same in golfs, jetta's, jetta sportwagens and the new beetles too. It's not known if the 2012 passats are affected. Yes, it affects you
 
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tdipoet

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i spoke with the service guys at my local shop today and they said that the new passats have been strangely trouble free. they expected there would be problems by now, but so far it's been very quiet.
 

MonsterTDI09

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The TDI version has only been out 4 months,it's still early yet
 

tditom

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It's no myth that Biodiesel CAN improve lubricity. However, it is also unproven that all biodiesel is created equal in it's ability to increase lubricity. Almost all of the studies are done with 100% virgin soy oil as the base stock. Biodiesel has also been made from many other plant and animal oil base stocks. The lubricity additive qualities (benefits) of these blends are much less well known.

...
Here's one link where they studied various types of biodiesel:
http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/reportsdatabase/reports/gen/20000501_gen-308.pdf

They tested biodiesel from 10 different sources and all took JP-8 fuel from ~800 down to well under 400 micron wear scar at even a 1% concentration.

I'm not talking about WVO but ASTM spec biodiesel. Any concerns with its ability to provide adequate lubrication?
 

flyboy320

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I wonder how much water may be in the biodiesel they are adding to diesel?

Biodiesel may contain small but problematic quantities of water. Although it is not miscible with water, it is, like ethanol, hygroscopic (absorbs water at a molecular level).[38] One of the reasons biodiesel can absorb water is the persistence of mono and diglycerides left over from an incomplete reaction. These molecules can act as an emulsifier, allowing water to mix with the biodiesel.[citation needed] In addition, there may be water that is residual to processing or resulting from storage tank condensation. The presence of water is a problem because:

  • Water reduces the heat of combustion of the bulk fuel. This means more smoke, harder starting, less power.
  • Water causes corrosion of vital fuel system components: fuel pumps, injector pumps, fuel lines, etc.
  • Water & microbes cause the paper element filters in the system to fail (rot), which in turn results in premature failure of the fuel pump due to ingestion of large particles.
  • Water freezes to form ice crystals near 0 °C (32 °F). These crystals provide sites for nucleation and accelerate the gelling of the residual fuel.
  • Water accelerates the growth of microbe colonies, which can plug up a fuel system. Biodiesel users who have heated fuel tanks therefore face a year-round microbe problem.
  • Additionally, water can cause pitting in the pistons on a diesel engine.
Previously, the amount of water contaminating biodiesel has been difficult to measure by taking samples, since water and oil separate. However, it is now possible to measure the water content using water-in-oil sensors.[citation needed]
Water contamination is also a potential problem when using certain chemical catalysts involved in the production process, substantially reducing catalytic efficiency of base (high pH) catalysts such as potassium hydroxide. However, the super-critical methanol production methodology, whereby the transesterification process of oil feedstock and methanol is effectuated under high temperature and pressure, has been shown to be largely unaffected by the presence of water contamination during the production phase.
 

Trooper81

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Here's one link where they studied various types of biodiesel:
http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/reportsdatabase/reports/gen/20000501_gen-308.pdf

They tested biodiesel from 10 different sources and all took JP-8 fuel from ~800 down to well under 400 micron wear scar at even a 1% concentration.

I'm not talking about WVO but ASTM spec biodiesel. Any concerns with its ability to provide adequate lubrication?
it might not matter in the big picture but that study was done long before ULSD was to be had at pumps.
 

tditom

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it might not matter in the big picture but that study was done long before ULSD was to be had at pumps.
The study used JP8 for a baseline and that fuel had 800 micron wear scar, so in terms of lubricity impact it is a good indicator of what the worst ULSD would measure as well.

so- relevant enough...
 

DEZLBOY

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Discussions between VW and Bosch must be "interesting" (in the Confucian sense). I'm sure VW would love to hand Bosch a $10K invoice on each failure, but that probably isn't happening.
Could we see VW demand payments from Bosch to cover VW repair expenses? And the Bosch "counter sue" that VW's claims are reckless? Or are these two companies so dependent on each other that behind the scenes the problem will be fixed, no one is blamed, and what ever compensation is due is done out of public view?
 

IFRCFI

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Could we see VW demand payments from Bosch to cover VW repair expenses?
Not if VW spec'd the pump, and Bosch had a more durable, more expensive pump available that was passed over due to cost. Then it's all VW............


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

BKmetz

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I was at my local VW dealership this week picking up some parts. While I was waiting for the parts guy to retrieve my parts a get the invoice ready, I had a short chat with the lead VW tech. He knows how particular I am about my car and was teasing me on when I was ever going to get a new one. I told him I would get a new TDI when VW solved/resolved the HPFP issues.

I asked him if they had seen any failures. He told me they just replaced the fuel system on an 09, $8000. We both shook our heads, then he went back to work and went to pay for my parts.
 

dweisel

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dweisel isn't diesel anymore!
I was at my local VW dealership this week picking up some parts. While I was waiting for the parts guy to retrieve my parts a get the invoice ready, I had a short chat with the lead VW tech. He knows how particular I am about my car and was teasing me on when I was ever going to get a new one. I told him I would get a new TDI when VW solved/resolved the HPFP issues.

I asked him if they had seen any failures. He told me they just replaced the fuel system on an 09, $8000. We both shook our heads, then he went back to work and went to pay for my parts.
A couple of years ago you would have been accused of creating FUD here on the forum. Now its just another hpfp failure................how things change over time.
 
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