I used to love my Passat

[Winesnob]

Most likely you will get your car fixed under the warranty, so I don't see any issue there. I said most likely because the injector injects the fuel and if you had a dodgy fuel VW can say it is not their fault and you would be chasing the fuel company. Then, yes you have an issue....

Yes, the car will be fixed under warranty, but I don't see that as being the issue. Thanks for your reply.

[Winesnob]

I have to say that Passat is a bit fragile (maybe all German cars are?)
All the high tech components that makes this car great seems to also make them delicate at the same time
The injector in Passat operates at very high pressure and are known to be sensitive to quality of the fuel you feed them
I've decided to only refuel at the big name patrol stations after DPF incident I had with mine
I think it will be well worth the couple of extra dollars.

Thanks for the reply and suggestion with the fuel.

[Winesnob]

There's probably no injectors left since all 4 of mine were replaced last month. Read the thread "it's on life support".

So you're the reason I'm waiting for an injector! Just kidding; thanks for the reply.

[Winesnob]

Provided you took a reasonable care, a modern family car shouldn't come to stand still/go limp in under 50,000km period.

That's what I thought. Obviously we are in a minority. Thanks for the reply.

[Winesnob]

What you mean to say is those people are realistic.

To claim that a modern family car (whatever that is) should not break down in the first 50k is truly the most ridculous strawman argument I have seen and anyone with an ounce of mechanical, electrical or computing knowledge would know this.

As for the car not going into limp home mode, this would be for a reason as they do this for many failures. If the injector failed because of crap fuel it's probable that the other injectors were not operating within spec but without knowing how the German engineers did their programming it's all speculation but I have no doubts that if the car could safely run in limp home mode it would have.

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Ok, I'm not sure what strawmen have to do with it but if they can fix it quicker I'm all for them. I've had many new cars and this is the first time I have had an issue under 50000km. I didn't expect it from VW, but now I will. Those strawmen won't fool me again. Thanks for the reply.

[Winesnob]

Yep, my understanding is that VW stock very little in the country and the majority in Singapore. Hence why when I got my Climatronic unit replaced under warranty it took about 4 weeks for the new unit to arrive.

Lucky that one was faulty too so now I'm waiting again...

I'm going to start smuggling VW parts in from Singapore. Thanks for the reply.

[ryana89]

Your a legend for replying to all those!
Thanks!!! haha

[Winesnob]

Your a legend for replying to all those!
Thanks!!! haha

People take the time to post, the courteous thing to do is reply. It's the least I can do. Oh, thanks for the reply, again.

[hooba]

People take the time to post, the courteous thing to do is reply. It's the least I can do. Oh, thanks for the reply, again.

We need more courteous types like you on the interwebz.

Thanks for the reply.

[passatpout]

What you mean to say is those people are realistic.

To claim that a modern family car (whatever that is) should not break down in the first 50k is truly the most ridculous strawman argument I have seen and anyone with an ounce of mechanical, electrical or computing knowledge would know this.

As for the car not going into limp home mode, this would be for a reason as they do this for many failures. If the injector failed because of crap fuel it's probable that the other injectors were not operating within spec but without knowing how the German engineers did their programming it's all speculation but I have no doubts that if the car could safely run in limp home mode it would have.

Sent from my Nexus One using Tapatalk

I am being realistic. First up, I'm a mechanical engineer and a Member of the Institution of Engineers. Secondly, I've spent several years working on trains. The reliability figures that my VW has shown so far would have resulted in a liquidated damages claim on most rail contracts that I'm aware of. To make it clearer, I've put some examples below:

Passenger trains - normally lower reliability purely because of the self-loading cargo, and increased systems as a result (doors, air con, seats, glazing, etc). Contractual requirements for trains that I have personally worked on have been in the range of 100,000km per train (of three carriages) per fault - regardless of sub-system. Modern rail manufacturers are willingly putting trains out and supporting that level of reliability, where contracts call for 95% availability of a fleet at any one time and running anywhere between 80-250,000km annually, with an inspection around every 6-10 weeks.

Freight trains - wagons are inherently reliable. At my current workplace, it is not unusual to see reliability figures for wagons in the millions of km between failures - so a fleet of 50 wagons travelling 250,000km each annually is travelling a total of 12,500,000km/year - with maybe 6 breakdowns. The best figures we have at the moment are coming in just under 11,000,000km per failure.

Locomotives - inherently a little more complex, but again we're routinely going 100,000km between inspections, and 3 inspections/year. Engines are travelling for around 5-6 years, so they're covering up to 1,800,000km between overhauls without failure. On a fleet of around 600 locomotives, doing a variety of work between short-haul heavy duty work to longer-haul but slightly lighter, with each locomotive travelling an average of about 700km daily, we might get 6 faults which impact on services each day (so about 70,000km between faults on average), but on a bad day only 1-2 of these might be so severe as to warrant replacing the loco. But then, wrapping all them up together is a bit like taking an average for a road fleet comparing a fleet with 10 cars, 10 light trucks, 10 semis and 10 road trains - different horses for different courses.

So, is that a strawman argument?

Looking at it from a different perspective - 50,000km in a car would equate to roughly 833 hours (travelling at an average of 60km/h). If I was installing plant and equipment in a factory (which I've done), and was told that every 52 working days (for a 2-shift factory working 16 hours/day, 6 days/week - typical of most places I've worked)) I could expect a breakdown, but that parts to repair wouldn't be kept locally and it could take up to a week to repair, I'd be getting the lawyers out again to go through the contract.

And finally, comparing to other cars. I've had 5 cars new from the factory - 3 Holdens, a Mazda and my Passat. The Passat is the only one which has had any breakdowns requiring it to be taken off the road within the warranty period - and it's had 2, with another 25,000km of the factory warranty outstanding.

So no, expecting a car to last 50,000km without a breakdown, in my humble opinion, and in the opinion of my father (who's also an engineer, owns a Polo, and started his career before the Quarrymen became the Beatles), isn't being unrealistic.

[passatpout]

Never new that, always assumed atleast a tiny amount of fuel was still pumped in. Thanks
Do the newer loco's run on a common rail injection set-up or are they still IDI?

Thanks

Nope, can't see why they'd need to pump fuel in if flywheel and car momentum is enough to keep the engine ticking over..

Loco engines are slightly different to car engines for fuel setup, purely because of size (we have engines at work which are V-16s, with a capacity of about 187 litres, and output around 4000hp, taking around 150hp just to keep the engine running - water pumps, radiator fans, fuel pumps, lube oil pumps, etc). Fuel is usually supplied by a low-pressure setup around a manifold, then a high-pressure pump injects directly to each cylinder. Depending on the age and vintage of the loco, the injectors are either electronic or mechanical.

[passatpout]

The dealers don't have access to those statistics but the fact that VW don't keep many in stock shows that it's rare.



And if you had continued on a few minutes later you and your passenger could have been killed by a semi hitting you head on. See how pointless it is playing the "could" game because the injector failure could have saved your life.



And this has what to do with allowing an engine to continue running under load?

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Reasonable stock quantities to keep on hand are based on likelihood of failure over a certain period compared to the lead time for the item. Everyone who I've questioned has mentioned how rare injector failure is, then commented along the lines of "but we've replaced a few of them now" - so it's either rare, or something they're getting lots of unexpected experience with... Either way, the responses haven't filled me with satisfaction.

The thing that annoyed me the most was that there was no warning when it failed - the engine just stopped. No fault indicators, no messages on the MFD, until after I tried to restart it. As I was about to pull onto a fairly busy main road, then yes, had it failed that way a few seconds later I reckon I'd have a write-off. The comment about possibly being hit by a truck (probably a higher than average chance, since I work in a freight terminal) is irrelevant in this context - if playing the could game is useless, then why is such effort put into finding out the causes of aviation accidents, shipping accidents, rail accidents, and even car crashes? If GE supply an aircraft engine which critically fails and destroys an aircraft's hydraulic circuits, resulting in an uncontrolled landing and killing people, and took the attitude that what could happen as a result of the engine failure (the loss of hydraulics, the crash landing, the emergency service response, etc) wasn't of any interest to them, they would lose accreditation for their products to fly, airlines would stop ordering their engines, and their business would collapse. Fortunately they don't, and didn't - that crash occurred in Sioux City, in 1989, and GE are still making aviation engines now, quite reliably.

And for my comment about the injectors shutting off, what I was trying to say was that an engine going into limp-home mode with 3 out of 4 injectors working is still better than the whole thing shutting down, and that engine damage would be non-existent or negligible since the injectors routinely shut off while the engine is running anyway. Personally, I would have thought more damage could occur as a result of trying to restart the engine with or without the fault messages - there's wear and tear on the battery, starter motor, ring gears and pinion, etc.

And now it's too late to argue any more.

[tryingavw]

you sound really angry with someone or something....do you need a hug?

[OilBurna]

perhaps some more wine. modern cars are complex animals things can and will go wrong...

[Winesnob]

you sound really angry with someone or something....do you need a hug?

He does sound angry, more so than me and I started the thread. I can sympathize a little, though.