NHTSA Update on CR HPFP failure investigation

kjclow

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Apr 26, 2003
Location
Charlotte, NC
TDI
2010 JSW TDI silver and black. 2017 Ram Ecodiesel dark red with brown and beige interior.
I bought my TDI in November of 2012, so that would make sense. I just went way back in the thread, and there are discussions of the numbers. Maybe I'll read a bit of that first before duplicating stuff that was already discussed two years ago.
As I said, I do not know how the 300 analyzed cases relate to the 5300/5900 field reports.
I found this post on difference between requested and actual fuel pressure interesting; but I'm not sure I want to keep both numbers up on the scangauge all the time.
Iirc, the 300 cases were those used by NHTSA to open the investigation.
 

Buckles2882

New member
Joined
Mar 14, 2014
Location
Maryland
TDI
2013 vw passat tdi
Help. I have found it before but am unable to find the list for hpfp failures. And where to go with a complaint of several issues with my 2013 passat tdi. Those issue include hpfp replacement, hpfp sensor replacement, head unit replacement due to electrical problems with long load times, intermittent volume changes in Bluetooth, backup camera not working, head unit restarts while driving, gas door malfunction, and pinched wire causing windows to go in and out constantly. Some have been fixed. Some they have tried and it hasn't worked. Hpfp is just the final straw in a frustrating 1 1/2 years of ownership. Any help is appreciated. Thanks
 

South Coast Guy

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 17, 2010
Location
Mattapoisett, MA
TDI
2009 Jetta TDI wagon
Help. I have found it before but am unable to find the list for hpfp failures. And where to go with a complaint of several issues with my 2013 passat tdi. Those issue include hpfp replacement, hpfp sensor replacement, head unit replacement due to electrical problems with long load times, intermittent volume changes in Bluetooth, backup camera not working, head unit restarts while driving, gas door malfunction, and pinched wire causing windows to go in and out constantly. Some have been fixed. Some they have tried and it hasn't worked. Hpfp is just the final straw in a frustrating 1 1/2 years of ownership. Any help is appreciated. Thanks
Ask your dealer for the appropriate contact. They will probably refer you to a district or regional representative.
 

Buckles2882

New member
Joined
Mar 14, 2014
Location
Maryland
TDI
2013 vw passat tdi
I tried contacting my dealer. They say there is no regional rep at this time. I ask them for further assistance and they say. We just sell the car. Volkswagen tells us what to fix it.
 

langer

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2011
Location
Bawlmer
TDI
'12 a3 & '07 gasser gti
I tried contacting my dealer. They say there is no regional rep at this time. I ask them for further assistance and they say. We just sell the car. Volkswagen tells us what to fix it.
What dealer? I usually get taken care of well at valley motors? But that's for strictly warranty work.
 

South Coast Guy

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 17, 2010
Location
Mattapoisett, MA
TDI
2009 Jetta TDI wagon
I tried contacting my dealer. They say there is no regional rep at this time. I ask them for further assistance and they say. We just sell the car. Volkswagen tells us what to fix it.
What bull****! If there isn't anyone holding that job now, there is someone else doing their work. It drives me crazy to hear someone give answers like that when they are asked for help. It ranks up there with the following answers:

1. There is no one here now who can help you.
2. The service manager (or sales manager or owner) is not here now. I had a salesman tell me that once while the owner was walking past me.
3. We aren't allowed to do that.
4. We have no policy for that.
5. Please put your complaint in writing and I will give it to our Manager.
 

kjclow

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Apr 26, 2003
Location
Charlotte, NC
TDI
2010 JSW TDI silver and black. 2017 Ram Ecodiesel dark red with brown and beige interior.
How about "I can't help but will make sure someone calls you back before the close of business." It's now 5:40 eastern time and no one has called me back! Not VW this time but the doctors office.
 

Fla_Panther

Active member
Joined
Dec 22, 2013
Location
Tampa
TDI
2010 Jetta TDI
And here are the vehicle build dates:
I find it very interesting that the data appear to show a three month cycle. That might narrow down the problem to a supplier, if VW rotates suppliers.

I'm curious how accurate this is though. I mean ... on one hand I'm happy that my car was built 09/09, as that falls in a month where there are no reported issues. On the other hand, if I'm reading this right this just says there were no reports of issues, not that there weren't issues.
 

Diesl

Veteran Member
Joined
Dec 3, 2012
Location
Chicago
TDI
'78 Golf Diesel (long gone); 2012 Jetta Sportwagen TDI w/ DSG
these plot data are clearly incomplete

I don't think you can draw those conclusions. The 300 cases these plots are based on can not possibly be complete, since there is another spreadsheet with several thousand case entries. I haven't figured out yet how they are related. Are they late-found complaints that VW added? Maybe I should remove the 300 case plots while I think about what to do next.
 

kjclow

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Apr 26, 2003
Location
Charlotte, NC
TDI
2010 JSW TDI silver and black. 2017 Ram Ecodiesel dark red with brown and beige interior.
I find it very interesting that the data appear to show a three month cycle. That might narrow down the problem to a supplier, if VW rotates suppliers.

I'm curious how accurate this is though. I mean ... on one hand I'm happy that my car was built 09/09, as that falls in a month where there are no reported issues. On the other hand, if I'm reading this right this just says there were no reports of issues, not that there weren't issues.
As far as I know, Bosch is the only supplier of the HPFP. Now they may use other suppliers for the internal pieces, but we will never know that.
 

waltzconmigo

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2010
Location
chicagoland
TDI
none
Diesl---I just sent a PM to a member who suffered multiple failures and hope to maybe gain some insight into the "consumer complaints" vs "field reports" difference. When this problem became public (here at tdiclub) many owner's were denied coverage unlike today where it seems that VoA is replacing fuel systems far outside of warranty coverage. I am thinking maybe, in the beginning, owner's were forced to file a formal complaint before coverage was offered.

Back to the prior discussion, it would seem, sales did not increase sufficiently for that 3-4 month period of time to account for such an increased number of failures. hopefully i will hear from the member mentioned above and can do a bit of searching through all of the infomation provided to the NHTSA.
 

Diesl

Veteran Member
Joined
Dec 3, 2012
Location
Chicago
TDI
'78 Golf Diesel (long gone); 2012 Jetta Sportwagen TDI w/ DSG
data for 3037 repaired fuel pumps Oct 2011 - Oct 2012

I'm still not sure I understand what these data exactly are. They should be inclusive, but are clearly not.
Anyways, some more plots from file INRD-EA11003-54335P.xlsx, which has the warranty data (?) for 3037 replaced/repaired fuel pumps.

Repair date:

So clearly cases keep piling up until the end of reporting period.

Repair mileage:


Amusing tidbit: From browsing through document 54326P.pdf, it seems at some point VW took a bunch of original high pressure fuel pumps, returned them to Germany, and put them without modification into cars for the German market. The US then got improved pumps.

I still haven't figured out how VW decides whether a pump failure is Bosch's fault, or due to bad or wrong fuel. I'm afraid the documents of March 30, 2012 that might contain that information, and info on regional and seasonal breakdown, plus comparison with other countries, were declared confidential and are not posted by the NHTSA. If somebody has found this info, please post it here (even if it is a repeat post - I can not possibly read all 6000 previous posts). These should be 'Request 32' data, points f) (adjusted rates per 1000 vehicles), g) (geographic breakdown), h) (seasonal), i) (country comparison). The NHTSA clearly asked for them.
 
Last edited:

waltzconmigo

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2010
Location
chicagoland
TDI
none
Diesl---those new graphs failed to appear

added---Diesl said: "Amusing tidbit: From browsing through document 54326P.pdf, it seems at some point VW took a bunch of original high pressure fuel pumps, returned them to Germany, and put them without modification into cars for the German market. The US then got improved pumps."

This is new information to me, has anyone else read this before. It would be interesting to get the build date of these pumps and find out how they have performed.
 
Last edited:

Diesl

Veteran Member
Joined
Dec 3, 2012
Location
Chicago
TDI
'78 Golf Diesel (long gone); 2012 Jetta Sportwagen TDI w/ DSG
Waltz - the axis labels were too small, so I remade them.
 

waltzconmigo

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2010
Location
chicagoland
TDI
none
Diesl---it would be interesting to compare your graph based on build date to the mileage failures graph (from 10-60k or more specifically 20-50k) based on VIN. Would that be easy to do with some computer program?
 

kjclow

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Apr 26, 2003
Location
Charlotte, NC
TDI
2010 JSW TDI silver and black. 2017 Ram Ecodiesel dark red with brown and beige interior.
Diesl---I just sent a PM to a member who suffered multiple failures and hope to maybe gain some insight into the "consumer complaints" vs "field reports" difference. When this problem became public (here at tdiclub) many owner's were denied coverage unlike today where it seems that VoA is replacing fuel systems far outside of warranty coverage. I am thinking maybe, in the beginning, owner's were forced to file a formal complaint before coverage was offered.

Back to the prior discussion, it would seem, sales did not increase sufficiently for that 3-4 month period of time to account for such an increased number of failures. hopefully i will hear from the member mentioned above and can do a bit of searching through all of the infomation provided to the NHTSA.
Waltz, I'm not sure that "many" is the correct term. From what I remember seeing in this thred and the NHTSA papers, a few owners paid for the pump replacement early on, at least in the US. We've seen reported failures and full replacement on here from a few 100 miles up to over 100k miles.
 

waltzconmigo

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2010
Location
chicagoland
TDI
none
kjclow---sorry, if I was not clear but it seemed as if "many" were initially denied. remember the whole styrofoam cup test? after some pushback VoA covered those failures, mostly, as well. Do you happen to remember anything more about the 300 failures Diesl graphed? I know you said that you thought those were what lead to the investigation but I was wondering if you could remember anything more specific. thanks in advance.
 

kjclow

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Apr 26, 2003
Location
Charlotte, NC
TDI
2010 JSW TDI silver and black. 2017 Ram Ecodiesel dark red with brown and beige interior.
Not without going back and digging through these threads. Since I'm sitting at home for another month or two, I'll try to go back and dig for the info.

I remember the cup test since some of the early failures were either documented or self confessed misfuels. Several were the VW prep guys running the car over to the fuel stations to top the tank prior to customer delivery. Some of the multiple failures were due to incomplete cleaning of the fuel system after the initial pump failure. Amy1000(?) had three or four failures within a short period due to incomplete cleaning. One happened on the VW mechanic road test after one of the pumps was replaced.
 

Diesl

Veteran Member
Joined
Dec 3, 2012
Location
Chicago
TDI
'78 Golf Diesel (long gone); 2012 Jetta Sportwagen TDI w/ DSG
Ooops - was I supposed to send something? I left a voicemail on the NHTSA helpline, to ask about the missing info from March 30, 2012, but I haven't heard back yet.
 

waltzconmigo

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2010
Location
chicagoland
TDI
none
Diesl---sorry if I was not clear, I am waiting to hear from another member about some of the facts of his failures, so I can compare them against the complaints.
 

Claudio

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 30, 2009
Location
IL
TDI
09 Jetta SW
i just received a letter from Crysler that my 08 T&C has a recall because the ignition switch has a defect and the key, in presence of a bump, could turn back to the ACC position basically shutting down the car suddenly.
if they did a recall for this, why they don't do it for the TDIs? Of course this is 6 years later than the manufacturing date so it might take another year...
 

South Coast Guy

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 17, 2010
Location
Mattapoisett, MA
TDI
2009 Jetta TDI wagon
i just received a letter from Crysler that my 08 T&C has a recall because the ignition switch has a defect and the key, in presence of a bump, could turn back to the ACC position basically shutting down the car suddenly.
if they did a recall for this, why they don't do it for the TDIs? Of course this is 6 years later than the manufacturing date so it might take another year...
Turning off the power disables the airbag, power steering and brakes.
 

turbovan+tdi

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Mar 23, 2014
Location
Abbotsford, BC.
TDI
2003 TDI 2.0L ALH, auto, silver wagon, lowered, Colt stage 2 cam, ported head,205 injectors, 1756 turbo, Malone 2.0, 3" exhaust, 18" BBS RC GLI rims. 2004 blue GSW TDI, 5 speed, lowered, GLI BBS wheels painted black, Malone stage 2, Aerotur
Turning off the power disables the airbag, power steering and brakes.
So losing the engine doesn't affect brakes or power steering? :confused:
 

SilverGhost

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 25, 2005
Location
Back in So Flo - St Lucie
TDI
'05 Golf - totaled :(, wife's '13 Beetle - buy back, TDIless
There is enough vacuum for 1-2 power assisted stops. After that it gets much harder. The EPS (electric power steering) keeps working if you switch the ignition off, so long as you are moving fast enough (>7mph?).

Jason


Sent from my iPhone
 
Top