NHTSA Update on CR HPFP failure investigation

My understanding is, a pressure reversion is causing the HPFPs to grenade. What causes it...? That, I don't know.

dieselfuel said:

My understanding is, a pressure reversion is causing the HPFPs to grenade. What causes it...? That, I don't know.

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A substandard design that no one did a Failure Mode Effects Criticality Analysis on? And whose chief engineer should be fired for?

turbocharged798 said:

The pumps blow because Bosch made a POS pump.

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What we don't know is if:

- Bosch made a POS pump that costs $
- Bosch made a better than POS pump $$
- Bosch made a significantly better, non POS pump that costs $$$

...and VW's accountants picked the one that costs $.

This is my bet...running the risk to save a few $. There are published documents from BOSCH that indicate the life.




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Pushing 4000 postings with no new information. It seems that the NHSTA will do nothing and VW will ride it out, change engine designs in about a year or so and continue their blame the customer first campaign with the current generation of tdis. What seems to be accepted is:

1) Lubricity additives are worthless. The hpfp still blow with or without them;
2) Pump design changes have not worked as it was previously reported that there have been 3 design changes with no cure;
3) The Passats do not seem to be having this problem;

The overall percent of failures seem to be low. As long as that is the case there will be no clamor for the problem to be fixed by recall.

The percentage of failures is only low if it's someone else's car and not yours.

There have been several reported Passat Failures.......one last week on the dealer fill....

Thunderstruck said:

The percentage of failures is only low if it's someone else's car and not yours.

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The percentage of failures is the same regardless of who it happens to.

Bill

What are the odds of that percentage?

thebigarniedog: >>> The overall percent of failures seem to be low.

The odds of failure are low, and probably getting lower, but they are high enough for at least one class action. The CA(s) have been essentially on hold while NHTSA pondered. With NHTSA inaction, and VW drifting back toward "blame the customer", the CAs may start moving.

Thunderstruck: >> The percentage of failures is only low if it's someone else's car and not yours.

The odds of failure become 100% if it's your car.

40X40: > The percentage of failures is the same regardless of who it happens to.

The odds are low, and may or may not be the same for everyone, because we aren't really clear on aggravating factors.

The problems (and what's keeping me from buying) are:

• no known actions reliably affect the odds
• taking a fuel sample at each fillup might provide some recourse, but I am not about to buy a car that requires such overhead
• no preventative maintenance or inspection materially affects the odds
• no way to reliably financially insure against failure - if VW had any real confidence in their design, they'd offer a cheap HPFP policy
• no confidence that VW will support the customer on failure
• you are definitely only your $9K own after warranty and EW
• no confidence that the fuel system will last 270K miles (where my ALH is now, with all original fuel system components)

The NHTSA foot-dragging has definitely worked in VW's favor, largely because it delayed the CAs.

It's working against VW in MY particular case, because I'm considering doing some upgrades to my '06 and keep driving it for another five years rather than buying a new one. Yeah, the '06 has the potential cam issue, but it's more manageable than the HPFP issue.

And, in the case of the PD, there's a way to guarantee that the cam issue is fixed once and for all - a 16v PD head, using roller rockers.

tomo366 said:

There have been several reported Passat Failures.......one last week on the dealer fill....

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Yes, it was reported........

It's working against VW for me as well. My Wife and I both want TDI Passats but I am getting real close to saying eff it and run back to an accord...which pains me to do.

While probability may be low, the failure mode is, for some, not going to be offset by the low probability. Personally, I'm not (yet) deterred.

Why does everyone keep saying additives don't work? Obviously it is impossible to prove they DO work, but if you actually read the HPFP failures thread it shows some interesting things...

For one, the vast majority of failures are without any additives. There are only about 8 failures in the thread that used additives and still failed. Of those; 4 stated they were only used "sometimes" or "monthly" or in one case "just started using..." so I wouldn't even count them as actually using additives (if they are not used in every tank they won't provide any meaningful protection anyway).

So that means 4 actual failures while using some form of additive. And 1 of those stated no metal shavings at all in the fuel system, just low pressure from the pump, so the additives may very well have saved him from a full implosion.

Sounds to me like additives do at least help.

I have always used an additive of some sort in all of my diesel cars all the way back to my Chevy Wagon in 81!

tomo366 said:

There have been several reported Passat Failures.......one last week on the dealer fill....

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I am only aware of three, two dealer misfuels and one owner misfuel.

There have been an average of 2000 TDI Passats sold per month since MY 2012. I took delivery in Sept 2011.

So around 20,000+ B7 Passat TDI's are now in service.

Were those all confirmed misfuels? I don't remember reading it as such.

Either way, you never know. The Passat's HPFP could just be better, but that doesn't mean they are completely fixed. Just because we haven't seen a lot of failing yet. It could become more prevalent. There's just no telling really. I don't think that's the case, but what if the new pump is say 60% better. There would still be failures, they would just take longer to arise.

DubFamily said:

Why does everyone keep saying additives don't work? Obviously it is impossible to prove they DO work, but if you actually read the HPFP failures thread it shows some interesting things...

For one, the vast majority of failures are without any additives. There are only about 8 failures in the thread that used additives and still failed. Of those; 4 stated they were only used "sometimes" or "monthly" or in one case "just started using..." so I wouldn't even count them as actually using additives (if they are not used in every tank they won't provide any meaningful protection anyway).

So that means 4 actual failures while using some form of additive. And 1 of those stated no metal shavings at all in the fuel system, just low pressure from the pump, so the additives may very well have saved him from a full implosion.

Sounds to me like additives do at least help.

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I think the vast majority of people don't use any additives.. That might also have something to do with it..

TDIJetta99 said:

I think the vast majority of people don't use any additives.. That might also have something to do with it..

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Ding ding. The fact that there have been HPFP failures with people using additives should show you that additives do not work and/or its not a lubricity related issue.

Let's state that another way:

Additives may not prevent HPFP failues. Poor lubricity fuel available in the US may not be the sole cause of HPFP failures.

We don't know the driving issues of the failures. From the fact that we have seen no clear evidence that VW/Bosch have found a clear and reliable fix for these issues, they don't understand all of the factors leading to the failures either.

kjclow said:

Let's state that another way:
Additives may not prevent HPFP failues. Poor lubricity fuel available in the US may not be the sole cause of HPFP failures.
We don't know the driving issues of the failures. From the fact that we have seen no clear evidence that VW/Bosch have found a clear and reliable fix for these issues, they don't understand all of the factors leading to the failures either.

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We do know one thing. The Bosch design allows the cam follower axis to rotate 90 degrees. When/if that happens, catastrophic failure seems to be inevitable. Delphi has a design that they claim prevents this and VW is using it in at least one engine. Why they are not using it in our engines and why Bosch has not adopted this design is a big mystery to me.

turbocharged798 said:

Ding ding. The fact that there have been HPFP failures with people using additives should show you that additives do not work and/or its not a lubricity related issue.

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There is no way one can claim that it is not a lubricity issue. The question would be whether or not the pump was built to withstand U.S. fuel specs.

Nor would the limited information available cause one to come to the conclusion that they do not work. Based upon the limited info one might have an argument that they do not always work.

None of that would detract from the argument that the pump should have been built more robust.

wanabe said:

We do know one thing. The Bosch design allows the cam follower axis to rotate 90 degrees. When/if that happens, catastrophic failure seems to be inevitable. Delphi has a design that they claim prevents this and VW is using it in at least one engine. Why they are not using it in our engines and why Bosch has not adopted this design is a big mystery to me.

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It could be that the Delphi design can't handle as high fuel pressures, or that it can't handle as high fuel volume, or that it has other issues preventing use of US fuel.

I'll note that VW only uses it on smaller engines in Europe.

I've searched the forum and couldn't find an answer...

Is there an official list of HPFP failures that have occured outside the US?

Apparently the diesel fuel is closer to Euro spec in Canada and from reading the list of failures it does look like most of them are occuring in the US. I saw one failure it Quebec but it wasn't the actual pump, just pressure regulator and it didn't grenade and take out the entire fuel system.

I'm sure it's been said somewhere on here before but I can't find it and I'm curious if this problem really is isolated to the US?

(I apologize, I swear I've searched the forum but with threads 160 pages long it's hard to read all the posts!)

This forum has predominantly North American members. The market share that TDI has in Canada has historically been higher than in USA and I know of no reason why this wouldn't still be the case. So you would expect at least one-tenth of the failures to be from Canada, but they're not, and the difference from one-tenth is pretty significant. It isn't known whether the failures reported from Canada involved filling up with US fuel, and from what I've seen elsewhere, the at-retail fuel lubricity in Canada is not perfect, either.

Given the frequency that I travel to the USA, it's still an issue for my own situation.

cosmith said:

I've searched the forum and couldn't find an answer...

Is there an official list of HPFP failures that have occured outside the US?

Apparently the diesel fuel is closer to Euro spec in Canada and from reading the list of failures it does look like most of them are occuring in the US. I saw one failure it Quebec but it wasn't the actual pump, just pressure regulator and it didn't grenade and take out the entire fuel system.

I'm sure it's been said somewhere on here before but I can't find it and I'm curious if this problem really is isolated to the US?

(I apologize, I swear I've searched the forum but with threads 160 pages long it's hard to read all the posts!)

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I think there has been 4 in Canada, one in Quebec, and I think 1 in BC, and not sure about the other two;

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=299854

flyboy320 said:

I think there has been 4 in Canada, one in Quebec, and I think 1 in BC, and not sure about the other two;

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=299854

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I've looked through that list, saw the one in BC and QC. The one in QC wasn't actually the fuel pump by the sound of it, but it was replaced with a bad pressure regulator. Looks like the percentage of failures is much lower in Canada and of those few who knows if there was some other aggravating factor.

I did a lot of research before buying my TDI and I've fallen in love with it after only a few days of ownership, but this is pretty concerning to me. I can't think of any other failure on a car that can cost you 7 to 8K...always thought the pinnacle of expensive repairs was an engine or tranny failure. I was choosing between Passat, Fusion, Accord, Camry, Altima, etc. and the Passat still looks the best on paper and I do enjoy the drive of the TDI with a manual. Something else we should all recognize is that all these other cars seem to have chronic issues if you research them on the web, for example the Altima and it's CVT.

I'm not losing any sleep over it, but it would certainly make me feel better if VW would recognize the problem and either come up with a new pump design or offer some sort of extended warranty on just the fuel system...just based on the cost of the repair, it has to make you think twice about keeping or buying one out of warranty. Have to think it's eventually going to hurt resale value as well, another reason I chose the TDI over the gas Passat and some other great cars.

cosmith said:

Something else we should all recognize is that all these other cars seem to have chronic issues if you research them on the web, for example the Altima and it's CVT.

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You have to remember that you're on a VW diesel forum with many dedicated owners. Many of the almost 4000 posts just in this thread are speculation as to the root cause of the failure and possible fixes. The "reported" failures is still fairly small but not insignificant if it happens to your car. Lately, VWOA has been stepping up to the plate and fixing these cars. I think there were a few at the beginning that didn't get fixed and am not sure how VW Canada has been handling those 4 failures. I try not to worry about it, but you'll see my name in here quite a bit too. I have two of these, so if they both go and were not covered by VWOA, I would be out about $1500 - $2000.

T.J.K. said:

Were those all confirmed misfuels? I don't remember reading it as such.

Either way, you never know. The Passat's HPFP could just be better, but that doesn't mean they are completely fixed. Just because we haven't seen a lot of failing yet. It could become more prevalent. There's just no telling really. I don't think that's the case, but what if the new pump is say 60% better. There would still be failures, they would just take longer to arise.

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There is a tear down (iFixit) of the B7 Passat fuel pump by 2Micron that appears to use better metallurgy than previous designs.

No way to know about how long the new design will hold up but the results so far are much improved over previous designs.

Do you have a link to this teardown? I would like to see it.