Year: 2010
Build Date: Not sure
Make/Model: VW / Jetta Sportwagon
Tranny: DSG
Mileage: 120,551 Miles
Diesel Fuel Source: Last fillup Mobile station in San Diego, CA, Various high volume dispensers
Additives: No
Problem: HPFP Toast
Repair Shop: Taller Mecanico Marquez "Carlos Marquez" Ensenada, MX, B.C. (646)176-73-48,
Charly.boy.58@gmail.com
Status: Waiting for buyback date, sitting in running condition in Ensenada, MX
A VW Holiday in Mexico
Happy Holiday Folks
I'm writing this as an informative as well as entertaining narrative.
Prolog
I would strongly recommend if you own a VW TDI vehicle and you plan on keeping it (modified to comply by VW) to reconsider the possible consequences after 120K miles. If you are going to submit the car to VW for buyback I would strongly consider parking it until the car is to be turned in at the dealership.
Chapter 1 "Oh, What a Wonderful Car!!!"
I bought a beautiful VW TDI Sportwagon with moonroof for my dear wife Marianne in August 2010. She always said she wanted a Subaru, but in the end loved this car. Between the government turn in your junker deal, buy a low emissions car deal, VW’s we want to be your friend 1K funny money and the VW buyback deal we probably only paid like $3700 for this car. We drove it for 6 years and over 120,000 miles getting more or less 50 mpg on the highway. Marianne would say we got less MPG, because she has a lead foot. Over the life of the car the dealer did the maintenance for free the 1st 30,000 miles, then I took over the maintenance. The maintenance and repairs always had some entertainment value.
One time when I took the car into the dealer and got it serviced. I walked out to the car with John the service manager and opened the hood after they were finished. Popped open the battery cover and the terminals were totally crusty. John the service manager showed me how to effectively dress down your service Techs. Then there was the malfunctioning intercooler. John spent a good hour with me going over how to replace it and explained that if a rock or something hits the plastic underbelly pan just right it will damage the intercooler underneath. He diagnosed this without looking at the car. I drove away and got about a block, pulled over, and decided to look under the hood. Low and behold I found the intercooler switch wiring harness on top of the engine had been chewed up by a rat that had crawled up next to the warm engine in the middle of the night. Drove back down and showed it to John and he chuckled and said the 2 cars I had parked next to had similar wiring problems from rats. Turns out VW uses soy-based materials in the silver heat shielding wire insulation and rats really like it.
Then there was the air conditioner failure. Turns out VW uses a clutchless AC system. The AC system failed and all the dealers wanted around $1300 to fix it. The compressor needs to be replaced they said. There is a refrigeration control valve on the compressor that takes the place of the clutch. Dealer wants to replace a $900 compressor, I bought a new refrigeration control valve off Ebay for $35 and recharged the system. Total cost, about $100. I gave John the old refrigeration control valve so he could show other costumers how to fix the problem on the cheap.
This car was the most amazing wagon though. We could go from Sacramento to Ensenada, MX for $35 in total comfort. We did that every year too. All while emitting so little emissions nobody would ever see our carbon footprint wherever we went... We loved this car.
Chapter 2 "Volkswagon,... YOU LIED to US"
So then the news hits and you know all about it. Turns out VW has written a routine into their engine control computer to sense when the car is on a smog checking machine at a smog shop that will tune the car to put out less nitrous oxides, then put out 40 times the legal EPA limit after it hits the road. We were really stunned. This was a car that fit right into our environmentally conservative lifestyle and we were so happy with. It would run forever and was so clean, not really? Marianne drove around in the car feeling shamed and ready to move on ASAP from this beast that was a social automotive outcast, fraud, PITA, PoS,... I got lots of letters and emails from many law firms asking to join their class action suits against VW. The courts convened, and the settlement took forever, but they finally came up with a pretty good agreement. I registered the car for the VW buyback online under Marianne's name even though our registration and title for the car was under "Marianne or Me" as the online registration didn't have any way to register for the buyback for ownership of a car the way we were registered. Besides we were going to turn it in in Sacramento. How hard could that be?
We left one weekend to go up to Woodland for a baseball tournament. Turned out that one of my son's team mates father had a VW TDI he was turning in as well for buyback. He said he was going to park it in the garage so nothing would happen to it even though he wouldn't be able to turn it in until the paperwork and buyback process was done in a few months. I thought this was being a little paranoid. Even if it get's in a wreck, insurance would fix it to drive it back in. VW would buy it back regardless of what it looked like as long as it could drive onto the lot under its own power, right? What could happen?
Marianne drove the heck out of that car. To work, on political campaign all over the place,...
Chapter 3 "Thank's Giving Road Trip to Mexico"
Marianne's parents live happily in Playa Corona, Mexico. They're both getting along in life and this is a great place for them. They own 2 little cabana's next to each other about 100 feet from the rolling surf in a retirement vacation community. Life is slow and easy here. Manana Land.
The only drawback of living in Playa Corona, about 50 miles South of the US border, is that the rest of the family lives in Sacramento, CA or the foothills above there about 550 miles away. So we decided to make a Thanks Giving trip down to Chuck and Sidney to wind down and vacation for a week. Marianne mentioned that the glowplug idiot light flashed a couple times a few days before, and I told here I would check it out when I was changing the oil and filter before we left. I changed the oil and saw no warning lights. By the time we left we were all pretty excited about sun and sand South of the border as it was already raining quite a bit in Northern California. We piled everything into the car, including our aging lab Sammi. This was a much easier trip this time as Andrew our son was learning to drive and could share wheel time with mom and dad. In fact, he took my shifts ;-) We filled up in San Diego at a Mobile gas station I found using GasBuddy on my Iphone. Total gas bill was cheap. The expected $35. Onward, Southbound we went. We arrived in the evening and lounged for a couple days acclimating ourselves from the drive to the beach. Playa Corona, miles of sunny beach, Manana Land. Even the dog was chilling hard.
Winding Forward to Thanks Giving. My son Andrew asked me if I would let him drive around town with him. He’s getting his drivers license. No problem. So we drove around town for about a ½ hour then started down highway 1. On the way back down highway 1 he commented he had the gas peddle floored and the car wouldn’t go any faster than 35mph. I looked at the speedometer and noticed the glow-plug idiot light was flashing. So we struggled along back into town. We pulled out of a stop sign with no power and I had him pull into a side street. I popped the hood and looked things over. No magic smoke. Andrew turned it over and nothing happened. I called Marianne and she said she would come out with Chuck to pick us up. They came by and picked us up and we returned home to Playa Corona for Thanks Giving dinner. After dinner a local friend of the family came by and we went back to the car and slowly towed it back home to Playa Corona.
I do IT and have been a problem solver all my life. So it’s not surprising that I was up until 3am in the morning looking for the solution on the web. It was one of 2 things. Either the intercooler had water in it. We had driven through a huge puddle/lake from the rain a couple times or The high-pressure fuel injection pump had self-destructed. Water in intercooler was easy. Loosen the hose clamp, dump the water out. But the high-pressure fuel injection pump (HPFP) was a different story. Hundreds of people had claimed they had this problem and documented it online. They even had a serious class action suit lined up.
Basically, the shaft of the HPFP was originally made of tooled steel and VW upgraded it after they discovered it wasn’t up to snuff. When it goes out it distributes sand size steel and aluminum particles throughout the entire fuel system of the car from the tank to the injectors, destroying the tank fuel pump, and lift pump in the process as well. The repair involves replacing all 3 pumps, the filters, and cleaning all the fuel lines, sensors, injectors,… to a operating room sterile level of 2 microns. Nothing can be present in the system larger than 2 microns. Volkswagon Dealer shops charge $8K-10K to do it!!!
First thought that went through my head. Repair car for $8-10K (Plus tow to border and into US shop) to be able to drive the car onto the lot to get $15K buyback (VW requires car to drive onto lot under its own power). Wow that doesn’t sound good,…does it now.
3am in the morning after Thanksgiving I snuck out to the car to check the odometer. Turn the Key.
120,551 miles
REALLY?
I slunk off to bed. Thinking it is what it is. Hoping, praying there is water in the intercooler.
So the next day we called the local recommended mechanic Carlos. He came by and we put the front wheel trailer rig on the car and he towed it back to his shop. Obviously we were not first in line. I went back to the family and we worked out a plan. I drove Marianne and Andrew up to San Diego, got them a rental car and they drove home. I was staying as “the man on the ground”. So the next day I submitted all the documents online for the Volkswagon buyback process. Both the registration and title designated both my “wife OR me” as the owners of the car. This was intentional. By doing this either one of us can handle anything to do with the car. Volkswagon required copies of the ID of the owner, registration of the vehicle, and title of the vehicle to be faxed, mailed, or uploaded online. I uploaded all of the files in PDF format. 3 hours later they sent back an email refusing the owner ID. I called up and they said that they needed only Marianne’s ID. I said it was there. They said it was not. I told them Marianne would not be able to return the car to the dealer. I was the only one who could do it. They said they had to reset the portal for me to resubmit the info. As the database had Marianne as the primary owner. I should reregister online for the claim in 3 days.
I went to Carlos’s shop and checked on the car. I had found a DIY write-up to fix/clean the fuel system replace the pumps and get the car running. I showed Carlos the write-up. He had a couple cars in front of me, but was going to look at it. Still didn’t know if it was the fuel pump or intercooler. I explained the best I could how to find out but there was a bit of a language barrier, and he was pretty absorbed in the cars in front of ours. The next day I went to an Internet Café and printed out a copy of the DIY fix in color and took it down to him to look at. He opened the fuel filter and it had ¼ inch of metal sand in the bottom. Really Bad. Bad, Bad Bad.
So we discussed the DIY info I gave him. He looked at the material list and thought he could get them cheaper in MX than I could in San Diego. I told him I would check back the next day. I translated the DIY repair write up to Spanish and got it printed at the internet café the next day. I took it down to Carlos. He had checked the local supply house prices and they wanted a $1000 for the HPFP. I told him I could do better in San Diego. So I went back to the house and started pounding the net.
Turns out that the dealers in the US want about the same for the HPFP as MX. However, they want a $100 core charge. Turns out you can buy a remanufactured HPFP for $500 if you ask for it. They won’t tell you that unless you ask. I drove to San Diego the next day. I was driving my father inlaws Chevy Uplander the whole time while this was going down (Thanks Charley and Sydney). If you have ever driven from Mexico across the San Diego border you will know that getting from the edge of Tijuana to the border is different ever time you try, is risky because people drive crazy, have no insurance, people and animals run in and out of the street, and it takes about 2-4 hours. Stressful. I drove into San Diego and got the pump and drove back. 100 miles and one day of driving. Dropped off the pump the following morning. After I got the HPFP so cheap, Carlos sent me back to San Diego again for the other 2 pumps!!! Ughh!!!
I left Carlos to do his magic. I checked the VW claims portal and they said it wasn’t reset. I called Volkswagon and told them it wasn’t reset yet. YadaYadaYada. They said to wait a few more days. I wrote a short summary of what was going on and emailed it to Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann, and Bernstein’s law offices who was dealing with the VW litigation.
Then I started waiting,...
I walked the beach for an hour or so a day in the sun. I researched used cars to replace this car. I ate a lot of street tacos and tamales. I was very lucky to have brought my Mac Air. I installed Kodi and watched a lot of movies in the evening. Marianne lost her debit card and mine got shut down too. The only cash I had down here now was cash in my pocket, and money I got back from Raspberry Pi Kodi (bought a few while in San Diego) boxes I built for the locals. I missed my family,...
I checked on Carlos a couple times, and he was working on it. I really didn’t want to rush him because I knew from personally working on diesel fuel systems before that this was tedious work. 2 microns. No dirt, no dust. In Baja Mexico. I talked to VW again and they said that they were working on it.
While I was car shopping I realized some things obvious, and something’s not. The obvious was buying a new car off the lot was stupid. It would depreciate the minute it hit the curb. But we are now reaching a transportation paradigm with hybrid cars as a well-established norm, and electric self driving cars right around the corner. Straight internal combustion (ICE) cars are out. The 2nd realization was that the car we would be buying was only temporarily going to be Marianne’s. In a couple years Andrew would inherit that car and Marianne would be buying into one of the new used cars whether it was a hybrid or electric. The new used car was going to be a used hybrid.
So I got a call from Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann, and Bernstein’s law offices and explained what was going on. The representative spent about 2 hours in the evening going over what had happened and my recourses available and it turns out I was doing all the right things. He didn’t understand why the Volkswagon contracted claims handling company was so stupid. Saturday morning rolls around and Carlos calls. The car is running!!! OMG! I asked him how much it was going to cost in labor.
11,700 pesos.
I almost passed out right there. 11,700 pesos = $567.49!!! Materials were $800. Total repair cost was $1367.49. Plus food and fuel,… I dodged a big bullet. I love Mexico.
No Wall Please…
I had a buddy drive me down to the bank on Monday and it turned that it was a Mexican national holiday “Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe”. The banks were all closed. I couldn’t wire any money or anything. So my buddy pulled the $560 bucks out of the bank ATM, and I paid him back with Paypal. Then paid Carlos and got the car back runnnnning. Turns out Carlos had 33 hours in labor into fixing it. You do the math. I parked the car behind my in-laws house and figured to drive down when I have a buyback date from VW and drive it to the boarder, then 11 miles to the dealer in San Diego. It runs great, but has a check engine light and the engine diagnostics is showing 2 codes leading to a worn intake gate linkage of some sort. Marianne asked if I was driving up after I got it fixed. Hail no!!! I’m not tempting fate. I could see it now. Stuck in Bakersfield with a clogged injector or some sh...t. No way!!! Cut my losses.
I wrapped up business in Mexico (it’s been 2 ½ weeks of car-chaos) and bummed a ride to the border from a friend, caught a trolley to the train, and Amtrak’ed to Sacramento for $75. So I’m on the train in the rain thinking, watching the beach go by and thinking damn I’m glad I’m not staring at brake lights in the rain. I call up Volkswagon for the 5th time and the lady asks me for my wife or she can’t talk to me about the settlement. Nobody asked for Marianne before. What gives? Thank god for smart phones. I conferenced her in and went on to do business. Turns out that after 5 calls somebody on the other end actually looked at the owner ID file I uploaded and SCROLLED DOWN to find Marianne’s ID was in the file I uploaded to begin with 3 weeks ago. But because they reset the portal I have to download and resubmit the same owner ID PDF file and call back on Friday. She said she could reset the name on the file so I could deal with buy back in San Diego without dragging Marianne down from Sacramento.
So I called Volkswagon on Friday and the lady says she needs to talk to Marianne before she can talk to me. Conference called here in,… Lady says she needs to reset the portal to change the name so I can go pick up the car (last call the lady said she didn’t have to do that). I finally lost it. She told me she would have to hang up if I didn’t stop the profanities.
· The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different response.
· When you do the same thing over and over again and get a different response repeatedly. What’s that?
I tell her I need a manager, and he says I can use a power of attorney and that I can download it from the claim site. We never/don’t need a portal reset or whatever. Well now a different better response that sounds much more promising.
So now here we are at present. I have my Claim Offer and called Volkswagon again. This is a typical call to Volkswagens Claim line. It took me 52 minutes to complete the call. The lady didn’t ask for my wife. Really… She did confirm that the wrong Power of attorney PDF online was the correct one to submit. The power of attorney file she confirmed was correct basically was a document to confirm we have given up all ownership of the car to Volkswagen. That’s definitely not the document to give Volkswagen before you get a check from them. I have submitted all the correct paperwork now and am in waiting mode. I still have to go back down to Mexico to get the VW TDI wagon and bring it up to the border to the dealer to bring it in. This odyssey’s not over yet.
We bought Marianne a pre-owned Prius and we’re really happy with it.
