As "The Keeper of the Spreadsheet" (see
here), I'd like to point out that there's really no way to quantify a failure reason.
Yes, if someone wants to come out and tell us they put gas in, then that's useful. Anything else is speculation, and speculation doesn't plot well. And I don't know of anyone on my list that had a failure due to gasoline, so we're back to square one...
What I can tell you for certain is that failures are rare, though they aren't winning the lottery rare. There's also data to support that failures not attributable to gasoline always happen early, but the argument against that data would be that most people are still under warranty (me, Rod Bearing, and a handful of others excluded
).
I can also tell you that dwiesel has taken apart some versions of the pump and has found that they're not very robustly built and that they use fuel as lubricant. Assuming that BOSCH engineers aren't stupid, the pumps can be properly lubricated using the average fuel available in North America. I don't think it would be a stretch to say that the pumps would not be properly lubricated with below average fuel. If you can guarantee fuel quality or compensation if there is a fuel problem, great. Otherwise, you may want to improve the quality of fuel you put in the car or the quality of filtration (which would improve fuel quality).
I have confidence that the NHTSA will have some sort of answer for us, however they suffer from the exact problem we do, which is the lack of data and the lack of public interest driving their investigation. Maybe it would help them see this is a problem that people are concerned about if they get calls about their investigation.
I've seen this discussion diverge from "what the NHTSA is doing" to "what BOSCH and VW should do" to something totally different... Yes, I'm sure we'll all agree that BOSCH and VW should extend the warranty on the pump to around its service lifetime. And we can probably reach a consensus on when/if you should replace the pump (it would be nice if VW listed a mileage, like they do for DPFs). But the problem is that BOSCH and VW are companies, and unless their public image changes, they aren't going to do anything because they're economically invested in
not doing anything.. The DSG problems weren't addressed until after it got aired on national news programs.
Therefore, I think the best thing for anyone to do besides reporting their failure to the NHTSA is to call their local news stations and tell them their brand new car just broke down on them and how it was scary to be driving and have it just die and lose power steering and flash a buttload of lights at them and then have to get towed to a dealer that can't fix the problem in a timely manner. These kinds of public interest investigative reporting pieces are the kinds that get picked up by regional and national affiliates on slow news days. But if it happened a month ago, it's old news and not worth reporting on. And news stations love to hear when people get screwed because they can tease the story all night and it'll keep people watching the commercials and other news.
