NHTSA Update on CR HPFP failure investigation

kjclow

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I've read all of that, or at least enough to know where your numbers came from, but don't believe that those numbers have been updated for at least a year.
 

RdPrry

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I don't know what the true number of failures are but I know I have had 2, one at 135000 miles and one at 228000 miles with my 2009 JSW TDI. Both were covered by VWoA although the second one was initially denied because of milage they did repair it after a year wait. I noticed no signs of failure until the warning message came on. The car consistently delivers 38 mpg running 78mph.
I stayed at that speed because here in Florida they won't ticket you normally if you stay less than 10 over the speed limit. I was driving 240 miles a day, but not since Feb.
 
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dubStrom

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I don't know what the true number of failures are but I know I have had 2, one at 135000 miles and one at 228000 miles with my 2009 JSW TDI. Both were covered by VWoA although the second one was initially denied because of milage they did repair it after a year wait. I noticed no signs of failure until the warning message came on. The car consistently delivers 38 mpg running 78mph.
I stayed at that speed because here in Florida they won't ticket you normally if you stay less than 10 over the speed limit. I was driving 240 miles a day, but not since Feb.
Aside from the (at least one) mia culpa in the report from VW linked bottom of last page of posts (changed the plating from electroplating to plasma coating to avoid the defective gap/abnormality), VW lays the blame mostly on gasoline contamination.

Chances are that the cause(s) of your two failures were not documented by VW for you? I wonder if gasoline contamination was documented by fuel testing on the fuel in your car when it was repaired? Do you refuel at a consistent place or places? I actually refuel at the same place when I am not traveling, and keep records (for small claims court if VW tells me I put gasoline in my car).. But based on most people's experience that are posted here, VW is repairing these failures anyway.

I also find it interesting that VW claims that no "kit" was developed or supplied for dealing with these failures (also noted in the report). Maybe not officially, but they must have had internal bulletins and/or training for at least managers to keep an eye out for these, with some guidelines on how to deal with them to minimize costs (since they are fixing them).

And what a pain in the neck to be faced with installing aftermarket filters in this already crammed engine compartment! Seems inevitable since fuel pump failure can eventually happen to any of them/us. I mean, who wants their fuel system dismantled and rebuilt, even for free. It is just an opportunity for connections to be overtightened, undertightened, wires and wire protection to be pulled/stressed, or metal flakes to be left behind in the system, etc.
 
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GoFaster

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The Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) and Volkswagen (VW) have received a total of 160 complaints and field reports ...
This is SEVERELY outdated. Somewhere in the mass of documents on the NHTSA site is a much later response from VW to the question of how many HPFPs had been replaced under warranty. That number was in the thousands, and even that number is getting out of date.
 

Aquila

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Another problem is the number of owners who never stumble upon this forum thus never report their failures. I had to convince one friend who had a failure to report it to NHTSA (don't think it was ever reported here). A neighbor who I met at a party had a failure a few months ago and still (to the best of my knowledge) hasn't reported it anywhere.

From my Nexus 5
 

kjclow

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This is SEVERELY outdated. Somewhere in the mass of documents on the NHTSA site is a much later response from VW to the question of how many HPFPs had been replaced under warranty. That number was in the thousands, and even that number is getting out of date.
I think that's where my estimate of around 2% total failures came from.
 

GoFaster

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The "number replaced under warranty" or "total number of in-service units replaced" should address issues relating to whether they were reported to NHTSA or not, unless someone is lying - and lying in an answer to a direct question from a government department is not a good thing for a corporation to do, so I think it would be reasonable to exclude that possibility. The one thing that is apparent is that the total number replaced continues to grow.
 

GoFaster

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I think that's where my estimate of around 2% total failures came from.
I believe based on the timing of when the document stating "thousands" (IIRC about 5,000 and no less than 3,000) came out, that my estimate was that the failure rate is somewhere near 1% per year - that is, if you own one of these cars, there is a 1% probability that the HPFP will fail in any given year, and that probability carries on year after year. I also believe that there was some discussion concerning the number of people who had experienced repeat failures, and the number of repeat failures more or less validated the 1% per any given year estimated.

If VW has made effective improvements to that pump, that number should gradually go down, but unfortunately, with only a couple of snapshots in time rather than continuous data, there is no way to independently validate that.
 

Diesl

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TDI2000Zim

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I believe based on the timing of when the document stating "thousands" (IIRC about 5,000 and no less than 3,000) came out, that my estimate was that the failure rate is somewhere near 1% per year - that is, if you own one of these cars, there is a 1% probability that the HPFP will fail in any given year, and that probability carries on year after year. I also believe that there was some discussion concerning the number of people who had experienced repeat failures, and the number of repeat failures more or less validated the 1% per any given year estimated.

If VW has made effective improvements to that pump, that number should gradually go down, but unfortunately, with only a couple of snapshots in time rather than continuous data, there is no way to independently validate that.

If you really believe that it is only 1%, why don't you have a new TDi?

Can't afford one?
 

TDI2000Zim

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There is a huge difference between COMMITTED and CONTRIBUTING.

I see a lot of the "HPFP failure is only 1%" Contributing, but not Committed.
 

TDI2000Zim

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It's been an approximately 1% per year failure rate for the HPFP; which is worse than an overall failure rate of 1%.

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?p=4317389#post4317389

Too bad, since these are great vehicles; but a bit fragile.
Wow, that is an impressive CUMMULATIVE number.

You wrote:

VW has released these figures; but the data is almost a year old now. The HPFP failure data VW provided to the NHTSA on 11/30/2012 (where "HPFP failures" are referred to as "Alleged Defects") is summarized in this post:

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.p...&postcount=177

Rounding to the nearest percent:

The HPFP failure rate for 2009 model year vehicles was ~4%
The HPFP failure rate for 2010 model year vehicles was ~3%
The HPFP failure rate for 2011 model year vehicles was ~2%
The HPFP failure rate for 2012 model year vehicles was ~1%

The failure rate probability is 1% per year ownership, it is not 1% overall.
I can only interpret this rate as CUMMULATIVE, in other words, the more years one of these CP4.1 equipped cars is kept, the HIGHER THE FAILURE RATE.

On the limit after 10 years (which is the time I keep my all VW TDi's) it will be 10% failure rate, if not more.

Those odds are impossible to ignore.
 

roostre

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Those odds are impossible to ignore.
It's all a matter of perspective.

As long as you have good shoes, some water and maybe a rain coat, a failure of the HPFP would not be anywhere near the worst thing that could happen to someone (assuming it did not cause an injury accident). Our easy lives make us overly sensitive to many issues. After living a long life, other issues will be your biggest concern.

For better or worse, the TDI has been my favorite ride so far.
 

GoFaster

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If you really believe that it is only 1%, why don't you have a new TDi?

Can't afford one?
Take "only" out of your sentence. A 1% failure rate PER YEAR for a component that has expensive consequences is excessive. And VW of Canada does not seem as supportive out of warranty as VWoA is - and I do too many trips to the USA to risk this.

My position for quite some time is that I do not want to own any diesel-powered vehicle with full emission control and a Bosch CP4... injector pump out of warranty.

My current daily-driver has a plain, ordinary, non-turbo, port fuel injection gasoline engine, and it was bought used, cheaply enough that if I get 70,000 km out of it I don't care any more. It's already almost halfway there, and runs perfectly.

I will need a motorcycle hauling vehicle come springtime, but it will most likely be a van leased through my company. Using the beater as the daily driver will keep the mileage off this, so it will stay under warranty. Most likely it will be a Ram ProMaster full-size van. Unfortunately, the gasoline-engine choice comes attached to a Chrysler minivan automatic transmission, which does not inspire confidence, and the diesel-engine choice comes with DPF, SCR, and (we think) Bosch CP4.1, which does not inspire confidence, either. Hence ... lease, it stays under warranty, and if it proves to be a dud, when the lease is up, they can have it back.
 

leicaman

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The next question is why VW is not doing this as a recall. Expensive, well yes, but think of the goodwill VW would be buying. It would go a LONG way to helping them get back on track to their lofty goals to increase market share in NA.

Has one ever thought that they themselves have NOT really discovered a proper fix?
 

GoFaster

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Has one ever thought that they themselves have NOT really discovered a proper fix?
That's pretty much my opinion ...

The design of the CP pump is fundamentally flawed and there is no proper solution aside from full redesign, which they don't want to do, because admitting failure at this point and replacing millions of pumps in the field (remember, VW Golf/Jetta are not the only ones using this pump and are not the only ones having trouble) would be a multi-billion-dollar exercise.

The realistic hope is that they just continue to replace them as they fail, and in the longer term, that GM is only the first of many manufacturers to say "no" to the CP4.
 

tditom

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If the CP4.1 is so fundamentally flawed, then why aren't they failing on the Passat?
 

GoFaster

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Application difference. It's possible that the lower operating pressure reduces stresses enough to extend the life of the pump. Small differences in stress level can make huge differences in lifetime when fatigue failure is involved.

I know, next question: "So why don't they do that to the Jetta" - well, that vehicle ran its EPA emission certification on the originally-designed injection pressure. Backtracking on something like that is a nightmare.
 

Diesl

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So, could one lower the operating pressure using VCDS? Or would it need a full-blown tune to change the injection pressure curve/map?
 

GoFaster

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VAG-COM certainly will not do it. Chip-tuners may have access to the rail pressure control strategy. No one knows whether this is indeed the critical factor. No one knows whether messing with the rail pressure would cause other problems.
 

ranger1

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That's pretty much my opinion ...

The design of the CP pump is fundamentally flawed and there is no proper solution aside from full redesign, which they don't want to do, because admitting failure at this point and replacing millions of pumps in the field (remember, VW Golf/Jetta are not the only ones using this pump and are not the only ones having trouble) would be a multi-billion-dollar exercise.

The realistic hope is that they just continue to replace them as they fail, and in the longer term, that GM is only the first of many manufacturers to say "no" to the CP4.
This is the best analysis of the Bosch CP4.x saga I've seen on this site. If you look at the industry in general at the time frame that the CP4.x pump was designed, it adds some insight as to what may have happened.

In late 2007/2008, around the time the CP4.x was being designed/tested and targeted toward a lower price point than that of the previous CP3 pumps, the automotive industry was in financial chaos. The economic crisis of 2008 had ripple effects on the auto industry, with unsold new cars sitting in storage fields, ships in the Pacific and elsewhere by the millions, because automobile sales tanked, while manufacturing was still cranking them out at a pre-crash rate. GM and Chrysler were headed into bankruptcy and their vendors were suffering badly. Many went out of business.

The destruction of the housing market had ripple effects - people were no longer using their bubble effect home equity to finance new car down payments. Banks were failing dramatically. Credit was severely impacted.

I looked at Bosch's financials in 08/09 and IIRC, they lost almost 2 billion euros. It was a hard time for everything automotive. Cost cutting was no doubt top priority. At the same time that the new car market was imploding, cost pressure from the likes of Hyundai and others put even more pricing pressure on VW, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Nissan and Honda.

When taking all of this into account, it's not a surprise that an attempt to drastically cut the cost of the HPFP in diesel vehicles occurred, even as EPA regulations required the ever increasing high pressure and costs associated with them. Something had to give.

In the case of the CP4.1 used in the VW and other vehicles, it was rated design life - 94K miles (150,000 Km) and warranty - 3/36 instead of 4/50. That's what we know from VW documents, I don't know if we have the NHTSA design life from Ford, GM, Chrysler and others on their Bosch CP4.x hpfp'.s We know they're failing on those vehicles as well, while their earlier precedesor, the CP3 continues to run very well on the same US spec fuel.

That's why I think the Bosch line about contaminated fuel is a scapegoat, because they built a pump that can't handle the US fuel. Someone earlier posted something to the effect that emails from VW engineers revealed that their fuel sampling wasn't showing the degree of fuel contamination that Bosch was claiming. It appears to me that Bosch is stonewalling with everything they can come up with, to cover up a defective product. VW, likely has no choice but to go along with this, unless it gets so bad that like Ford, they end up in a lawsuit with one of their major suppliers.

I posted a pdf some time ago showing one of the reasons that solenoid injectors were upgraded by Bosch to compete with piezo injectors - it was a single reason and it was cost. Bosch already builds a reliable hpfp for US fuel, the CP3. GM is using its predecessor, the CP1H, so we know it can be done, but can it be done at the same lower cost as the CP4.x hpfp?

That's why I agree with GoFaster's assessment that the pump is fundamentally flawed, because in their quest to cut cost, Bosch went too far. Just looking at the size of the roller that sits between the piston and pump cam, comparing it's diameter and the camshaft diameter to derive a speed multipler ratio, it seems that it's going to run at least 2x times faster than crankshaft speed. That's pretty high speed compared to the CP3 design, which doesn't have a roller, just a 3 sided crankshaft that converts rotary motion into vertical motion. Softer material and higher speed have not proven very reliable in this pump. So using even 200 bar ( ~3000 psi) less pressure on that tiny roller and possibly a better grade of DLC coating may well be why the Passat CP4.1 HPFP is lasting longer. But with a design life of 94K miles, I don't think we can expect the same real world long life of the earlier CP3 pumps that the pickup truck world has been experiencing.

I also agree that at this point, any redesign of the pump is an admission of design flaw and the cost to issue a recall would be astronomical for Bosch and VW. IMO, and it's only an opinion, VW went for the odds on this one and they lost.

I've been wondering what the upside is for VW/Bosch to just replace the hpfps until the next gen engine comes out and I don't see it. If the pumps continue to fail on these cars as they approach 6 to 8 years old, the loss of resale value will hurt VW more than it will Bosch. It could well be the equivalent of Chrysler's transmission reputation of the 1990's, even though VW didn't make the CP4 pump. At some point, they may have no choice but to sue Bosch over this.

I too see GM's use of the CP1H as a possible out for VW, under the cover of lowering costs, (as they've already done with solenoid injectors on the Passat) - it set the precedent, showed that current emissions can be met with prior gen pumps without the poor reputation of the CP4 in multiple manufacturers vehicles. It's either that or they buy/license 2Microns pure flow design and start retrofitting them to every CP4 equipped vehicle they sell.

Only time will tell.
 
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kjclow

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Wow, that is an impressive CUMMULATIVE number.

You wrote:

I can only interpret this rate as CUMMULATIVE, in other words, the more years one of these CP4.1 equipped cars is kept, the HIGHER THE FAILURE RATE.

On the limit after 10 years (which is the time I keep my all VW TDi's) it will be 10% failure rate, if not more.

Those odds are impossible to ignore.
As I look at those statistics, I come away with the conclusion that since it has been established that mileage is not an indication of potential failure, and the percentage of failures have been decreasing with each model year, then, IMHO, the changes that VW/Bosch made have helped decrease (not eliminated) the HPFP failures.
 

South Coast Guy

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Kjclow, you are assuming that all pumps will eventually fail. It is possible that all the pumps that will fail have already failed (at least for the 09s). And you assume a constant failure rate.
 

kjclow

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Since we have seen failures in 2013 models, then my assumption is that the issue has not been eliminated.
 

Softrockrenegade

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Why would vw stick with the cp4 hpfp in the new engine platform coming out if the if the pump is truly flawed? Maybe they finally figured it out with the passat?
 

TDI2000Zim

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I agree with ranger1, the involved parties are stalling for time.

Bosch is at fault, but the sheer number of TDi units forces VW to protect the faulty investment.
 

BRUSSELS BELGIAN

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No more VW's

Since the new Mazda Skyactive engines are reportedly getting 50 or more mpg in reasonable driving, why waste your time on a company that does not want your business?
 
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