Garage made mistake with repair - not sorted 4 months later

bluey1406

Hi all, I'd be really grateful for some advice from any mechanics, as well as any general thoughts on my issue.

I have a VW Caddy Maxi which is converted into a small camper van (professional conversion - this doesn't really matter aside from the fact that the van obviously worth more than a regular 2015 Caddy)

The van went into limp mode in early January and took it to our regular garage who identified that a fuel injector needed replacing; on their advice we had all four replaced as they said that these things tend to fail one by one and we'd probably end up having to keep taking it back which would cost more in the long run.

Got the van back and OH reported after a couple of days it was still limping; garage said it can take a couple of days for the injectors to "bed in" and it should be fine after a few more miles. Next day he went to start it and it wouldn't start.

Called the garage who came out and initially said they were unsure what the problem was but recovered it back to the garage.

Then got a call to say that the fuel pump had gone and the reason for this was that they had failed to do "something" when installing the new injectors (we think a full clean out of the diesel system should have done and wasn't).  They agreed immediately it was their fault and agreed to sort it out. 

We got it back with a new fuel pump but shortly after that it started to lose power any time it went above 3,000 revs.  

Called the garage, seemed unsure what the issue was but said to bring it back in.  This was mid Feb.  Despite chasing didn't hear anything until mid March when they said that the fuel pump needed replacing again and it had been delayed from Germany.  Said the van was driveable in the meantime so we could pick it up (my husband uses as his daily drive to work so has been a real headache not having it) and they would let us know when this came in;  We collected the van back on 21 March and still haven't heard anything about the pump.

Today my OH has said that the van is leaking diesel and smoking! He has managed to speak with the garage and a diesel pipe had come loose which with their guidance he has managed to push back in and they have said that he can drop the van back today.

I'm quite concerned that they have damaged the van and that as a result we will continue to have issues with it - are there are any mechanics who could put my mind at rest in this respect?

I feel that we have been really patient with the garage and whilst they have accepted is their fault, the communication is really poor and we have been without the van for weeks at a time which has been really inconvenient;  luckily my OH has been able to get a lift to work but if he hadn't we would have had to hire a car and the garage would have had to pay for that.

It might be that this needs to move over to a legal board for advice.

Many thanks in advance

m0bov

Best thing is to ask for the garage to refund all your costs and get it trailered to another specialist to be looked at. Any consequential losses should be claimed back. They have failed to do the work with due care and skill.

How did you pay for the repairs?

daveyjp

When they said it needed new injectors chances are they were guessing and hoping.

New injectors 'bedding in'?  Does that mean every single brand new diesel vehicle has a period of dodgy running while the new injectors 'bed in'? 

On that statement alone I'd be finding another garage.

Goudy

daveyjp said:

When they said it needed new injectors chances are they were guessing and hoping.

New injectors 'bedding in'?  Does that mean every single brand new diesel vehicle has a period of dodgy running while the new injectors 'bed in'? 

On that statement alone I'd be finding another garage.

I think they probably got the the fact the injector was bad right, but didn't bother to find out why it went bad.

I suspect the HP pump has worn enough to have put swarf in the fuel system and they haven't dealt with that properly before fitting more and more parts at your cost in the hope of fixing it.

The "bedding in" comment should alert you to the garage practises.
Injectors are calibrated and come with a calibration code to enter into the cars PCM.
Injectors not only work on duration but bandwidth too (so both how long and how fat each injection is).
All the injector calibrations codes should be uploaded into the cars PCM first.
 
Fitting them "dumb" and waiting for the cars PCM to work out what they should do with them is a bit shoddy.

You don't need another garage, you need a local diesel specialist.

Mildly_Miffed

Agreed, sounds like they simply didn't have the software to code the injectors in.

A "clean-out" of the diesel system is irrelevant - the fuel filter will catch anything before it gets to the pump and injectors. At most, if there IS anything in there, you'll need to replace the filter more quickly - cheap and easy. About the only exception to that is if it's been badly misfuelled and then tried to run on mostly petrol. That'll kill the pump in short order, with swarf getting everywhere. But you'd know if you'd done that...

But, no, there's nothing they'll have "damaged" that can't be fairly easily rectified.

Goudy

Mildly_Miffed said:

A "clean-out" of the diesel system is irrelevant - the fuel filter will catch anything before it gets to the pump and injectors. 

That's not quite right.
There's no filter between the HP pump and rail/injectors, so if the HP is breaking up there's nothing to stop the swarf getting to the injectors.
The fuel filter is between the tank and the HP pump.

Also a diesel doesn't use all the fuel at the injectors, the HP pump over supplies. There are little link pipes between each injector that carry this unused fuel or spill off back to various points in the fuel system depending on what the car is doing. (which by the sounds of it may have leaked)

Quite often when the engine and fuel are cold, it'll recirculate this spill off from the injectors back around to the pump as this fuel is warmer/moves more freely because it's already been pressurised by the HP pump than cold fuel directly from the tank.

Once the engine is warm it will then either send the spill off back to the tank or back to the fuel filter to mix with the colder fuel entering the system.

So any debris or swarf from a HP pump failing can end up throughout the fuel system.

I imagine the garage has plugged the car into generic trouble code reader, seen a knock or injector issue.
They haven't diagnosed which injector or why, so wanted to replace all of them in the hope of getting the right one.

They should have looked for which injector was duff and why before replacing any of them.

Mildly_Miffed

Goudy said:

Mildly_Miffed said:

A "clean-out" of the diesel system is irrelevant - the fuel filter will catch anything before it gets to the pump and injectors. 

That's not quite right.
There's no filter between the HP pump and rail/injectors, so if the HP is breaking up there's nothing to stop the swarf getting to the injectors.
The fuel filter is between the tank and the HP pump.

Also a diesel doesn't use all the fuel at the injectors, the HP pump over supplies. There are little link pipes between each injector that carry this unused fuel or spill off back to various points in the fuel system depending on what the car is doing. (which by the sounds of it may have leaked)

Quite often when the engine and fuel are cold, it'll recirculate this spill off from the injectors back around to the pump as this fuel is warmer/moves more freely because it's already been pressurised by the HP pump than cold fuel directly from the tank.

Once the engine is warm it will then either send the spill off back to the tank or back to the fuel filter to mix with the colder fuel entering the system.

So any debris or swarf from a HP pump failing can end up throughout the fuel system.

Yes, as I later said in that post, a pump that's busy wearing itself into swarf will contaminate the rail. Usually from a mis-fuel, because the petrol strips the diesel lubrication from the very tight tolerances needed to generate rail pressures of a couple of thousand bar.

But the rest of the fuel system? That all comes through the filter on the way to the pump. Yes, including the fuel returned from the rail.