What a difference a new HPFP makes...

So today was the first time I got to try the oil-changed and updated-high-pressure-fuel-pump-equipped Boxster out on the highway.

My emotions range from pleasant surprise to outrage.

The pleasant surprise is that this basically feels like a different car...one with a much smoother-responding throttle. It always seemed that the power delivery was a little bit "rough" under load (i.e., when I really needed/wanted it NOW), and I had basically written it off to a quirk of the new DFI engine design because it was quite consistently imperfect. Just a bit of hesitation before the power came on. Just....a...wee...bit.

But now there is...NONE. So that's a good thing, in and of itself. The outrage part: that makes 29K miles where I have not had the full quality of the power train at my disposal. The entire "silent" part of this recall is flabbergasting to me; if I'd simply been notified of the issue a year or more ago, I would have had a car without any of these issues ever since:

1. "Emergency Transmission run" messages on startup, requiring the ignition to be turned off and back on again;
2. Problems starting (could take a lot of cranking)
3. Sub-par throttle response
4. Danger of catastrophic fuel-pump failure

This is probably the first time ever I feel as if I've been screwed by Porsche. Right now, if someone told me there was a class action initiative over this, I'd probably sign up...and I'm not the litigious type by any stretch of the imagination...

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com

[pedrosboard.com]

Glad to hear it was resolved; let's hope it stays that way.

For the BMW 335i it was a very big deal, especially with cars dying in traffic or going into the limp mode on interstates. I guess BMW got the message and decided to save their reputation and do the right thing by their customers. Apparently it hasn't gotten to that point with Porsche.

You don't happen to know the manufacturer of the pump or their part#, do you?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/19/2012 08:40PM by MikenOH. (view changes)

I can inquire about manufacturer / part #... I assume you mean the new one rather than the old one (in case they're different)?

Here's what the invoice shows for the hpfp-related work (don't know if these are part #s or just some kind of codes):

1 000-043-301-44 high-pressure pump f
1 9a1-106-305-00 sealing
1 999-707-625-40 O-ring
1 900-123-007-30 alum seal ring

(all prices listed as n/c, of course, since I wasn't being charged.)

HTH.

Just wanted to see if it matched up to what BMW was putting in their cars at the same time.

I asked my service manager for the info you requested about the old HPFP, and all he was able to give me was the part number: 9A111031501. As for who the manufacturer was, all he says he was able to ascertain is that it was made in Germany.

I'll visit the Bimmerfest site and see what manufacturer and part number are referenced.

Yep--Siemens it is. According to one post, Siemens was the original supplier and when the stuff hit the fan, Bosch was brought in.
Having said that, when you do a search of HPFP problems, a lot of issues on diesel engines come up--VW,GM,Ford--with a lot of failures due to metal flakes from the pump hosing up the injectors. Kind of surprising given how long HPFP's have been used in diesel engines.

Anyway, this is one of those issues that deserves additional attention; as Roger's post indicates, there where some current BMW's still having pump issues--4 +years after the pump began being used in their gasoline powered vehicles.

Just as a side note, when doing a bit of research on the Bimmerfest site, one of the posters--a woman that had some technical expertise in the petrochemical business and worked for a lab that did analysis (posted on the board)--compared a couple of samples of gas taken locally in TX for comparison; One was Shell V something 93 octane and the other was regular taken right out of the tank of a rental car. The rental car gas looked right on for specs--octane (87)/ethanol content (10%); the Shell V performance tested at more than 97 octane and nearly 12% ethanol--vs. the current limit of 10%.
Given how all these M54 BMW motors need 93 octane and how some motors don't do well with ethanol, it made me wonder if this is fallout from higher than normal ethanol content.

but also have to state the situation is partially of your own making.

Now before the flames come let me explain.

I'll do so by admitting I've done this, what I'm about to cover, myself to my regret.

What you failed to do, well, let me describe what I failed to do so maybe it won't seem so confrontational...

What I failed to do was when I heard a faint high pitched squeal coming from my car (my 996 car that is) while I mentioned this to the techs I never demo'd it to them.

Eventually the car's CPO warranty lapsed.

Not too long afterwards, wouldn't you know that with warmer weather I drove the car to the dealer and the noise was present. The techs heard the noise and told me it arises from a high pressure valve in the power steering hydraulic system vibrating.

The fix is to replace the valve. The labor is not that bad. Just an hour or so. The problem is the valve's cost. The valve is not sold separately, but comes as part of a new power steering fluid reservoir. The cost of this reservoir is around $1000. The reservoir doesn't even have to be removed just the old valve removed and the new valve -- removed from the new reservoir -- then put in the old valve's place.

Because I didn't make an effort to demo this noise to the techs while the car was under warranty I now have to pay to have a problem fixed that has been present in the car since before the CPO warranty expired.

Oh, I just remembered yet another case where I screwed up... the car's radio was occasionally coming up while looking like it was working quite dead. No sound but all the buttons worked, the display at least followed the buttons. I brought this to attention of the techs and was told it was due to the device I have attached to the car's OBD2 port/connector or the number (2) electrical devices (V1 radar detector and Garmin Nuvi NAV unit) powered from the dash's cigarette lighter socket.

While I seriously doubted either the device connected to the car's OBD2 port or the 2 devices powered by the car's cigarette ligther socket had anything to do with the radio's symptom/behavior I was not willing to do without the radar detector or the NAV unit, and I was especially not willing to remove/unplug the device from the OBD2 port. I was then and still am testing this device in both of my cars (and this device is inside a number of other cars around the world.)

I later learned this radio behavior was a while rare problem a known one and solved with a radio controller software update.

However, as with the power steering fluid system valve noise I didn't push the issue and now I have to live with the radio once in a while, a great while, being dead. A key off key on sequence (or temporarily removing the radio's fuse) resurrects the radio but often it is not convenient for me to do this. Since I seldom listen to the radio, it is not that big of a deal. It just irritates me that I let something slide when I could have had this fixed/addressed under the car's CPO warranty had I been a bit smarter.

You are guilty of the same thing.

Because you didn't demo the issue to the techs, and because the symptom wasn't too bad, you let it go.

Far longer than you should have.

But all's well that ends well and you have a new and correctly working fuel pump and the car is transformed.

In a few days I'll have a quiet 996... the valve and its squeal will be gone.

Let me end by saying for the benefit of others, if your car exhibits some odd noise, or behavior, take the time to determine how to reproduce it and then do so in front a tech.

While the noise or behavior might be normal -- though be on the alert if you hear "they all do that" and do not accept this as gospel -- it might not be normal.

In the techs' world, no symptom means no problem. They have to see/hear/smell or whatever the symptoms or signs of a problem before they can do anything about it, even if and especially if, a warranty is involved. The factory is pretty explicit in what it requires a tech observe before it will authorize any warranty repair work.

(For instance, just a few days after I bought my 08 Cayman S the radio started acting funny. I took the car to the dealer where I bought the car and the SM got the car in and the tech connected a diagnostics computer to the car and after awhile told me he had reset the radio and a check out of it found it was working ok. The radio sounded ok in the service bay, too. I left. But the radio started acting up again not too long after I left. I was not able to get back to the same dealer and a few days later it was more convenient to take the car to another dealer. In spite of what I told the techs the 1st dealer had done, and in spite of the fact the radio was obviously not working right, the tech who was assigned to my car did the same thing, and this time the radio's condition had gotten worse and the reset/check out didn't resurrect the radio like it did before (at the 1st dealer) and a new radio was installed under the car's new car warranty.)

Sincerely,

MarcW.

In fact, I took the Box into the dealer after the first few "Emergency Transmission Run" messages, and they checked it, and had nothing to offer me in terms of an explanation. Every time I was there and chatting with the service manager for a year and a half, I'd ask him if they figured out what the message meant. He basically shrugged. This isn't something I could show them when it happened, because in order to move the car I had to clear the message. I guess I could have had it flatbedded with the ignition still on to display the message, but I just didn't see the need. Who would have associated a message like that with the frickin' fuel pump, lol? If it was the transmission (since, after all, the word "transmission" was in the message) and it stopped working permanently, I'd know it!

The slow starting issue, though, didn't begin to happen until about 6 months ago, and because it was a minor nuisance (2-3 seconds of cranking at its worst, and not every time), it didn't occur to me to make a special trip to the dealer about it. When I finally did mention it was when I had the car in for that recent oil change; that's when they told me about the HPFP issue and we scheduled the subsequent service to deal with it.

Now, I've got one other issue that has never been resolved: crappy XM reception (it cuts out at the drop of a dime) and the rather surprising property that if the speakers had been muted at the time the signal was lost, then they UN-mute themselves automagically when the signal gets re-acquired. Once this happened to me coming out of a tunnel, with the top up, so that the sudden unanticipated blast of sound from the stereo scared the bejeezus out of me at a moment when visibility was a bit on the difficult side. Not a good combination. (BTW, I've seen the exact same behavior on a sibling PCM3 system in a loaner Pepper, so I'm pretty sure this is a design "defect" rather than something specific to my own Boxster.) I've extensively biatched about this to several different service managers...and they basically shrug their shoulders and express skepticism that this actually represents a safety issue. I guess they aren't as high-strung as I am...

*flame mode off*

I guess it's "vent" day, lol.

You're exactly right, Marc--things that don't seem right on a car with an existing warranty don't get better with age; better to get it sorted while you have the car maker backstopping you.

$1000 for a PS reservoir--yikes! One of the scarier things about owning a Porsche--replacement part costs( at least some of them).
Didn't you just miss out on paying for a new transmission case because of some small part failed during the warranty? What would have been the cost on that one?

Quote
MikenOH
You're exactly right, Marc--things that don't seem right on a car with an existing warranty don't get better with age; better to get it sorted while you have the car maker backstopping you.

$1000 for a PS reservoir--yikes! One of the scarier things about owning a Porsche--replacement part costs( at least some of them).
Didn't you just miss out on paying for a new transmission case because of some small part failed during the warranty? What would have been the cost on that one?

thanks to the CPO warranty was a new transmission (or a rebuild of the existing transmission) in my 03 Turbo.

At oh I forget now the miles but between 30K and 50K miles when I had the car in for an early tranny/diff fluid change -- not scheduled/due until 90K miles IIRC -- and the tech after removing some panels to get at the tranny/diff spotted a tranny fluid leak. The leak was around/past a selector shaft seal.

The leak was not bad. No fluid was yet hitting the ground, possibly due to the panels under the tranny catching the fluid though I never looked the panels over to see for myself. Just didn't think of it at the time.

The techs called PCNA and then the factory to see what to do. The word back from the factory was to replace the transmission. One was shipped over from Germany.

The 'estimate' I got had I had to pay for a new transmission was more than $10K. The tranny alone costs around $10K and there's some labor to remove the old one and install the new one.

Now, the techs told me the leak wasn't that bad and had the car not been covered by a warranty it would have been alright to let it go. I do not know what the prognosis was for it getting worse, though I suspect it would have gotten worse eventually.

Or the techs told me that in spite of the factory's lack of interest in having the techs rebuild the leaking tranny, had the car been out of warranty and of course had I wanted this done they could have rebuilt tranny during which time the leaking seal (and maybe the other seals too and anything else that an inspection of the tranny internals turned up) would have been replaced.

The techs told me the 996 NA tranny shares many parts with the 996 Turbo tranny and this seal (among other parts) is one of them.

They also told me they had training/experience in rebuilding these transmissions so that was not a concern.

The tranny would have still had to come out and the labor to 'rebuild' the thing was IIRC roughly estimated to run in the several thousand dollar range but I do not recall the exact numbers now and I never got a hard quote either, but my memory is a number around $5K was mentioned.

Now the tranny/diff fluid change interval is 90K miles. But I am a fan of having this fluid changed more often.

Part of the reason is to have this done while the car is under warranty thus giving the techs a chance to view an area of the car that is not often that exposed. The panels only have to come off to due a fluid service (or of course to repair/replace something in this area) and while I watch techs inspect cars their view is hindered by the panels.

I might add the original transmission was not a smooth shifter -- I just attributed this to the heavy duty aspect of the transmission and the fact my Boxster's 5-speed shifts like butter -- while the replacement transmission (a re-manufactured transmission too) -- has markedly better shifting.

Still not as good as my Boxster's shifting, but close enough, and quite acceptable.

Anyhow, some time later the shifter broke. The plastic socket the ball of a shifter link fits into failed. The techs told me this was a rather common problem.

This too was fixed under the CPO warranty and in addition I managed to get a 997 speed shifter installed which improved the shifter's feel, too.

I can tell you more than a few times I thanked my lucky stars for finding a nice car with a *CPO* warranty. Based on my experience with my Boxster and its first 80K miles I didn't expect the Turbo to really require any attention but I was proved wrong.

Sincerely,

MarcW.

Ummm, a full-scale recall is not possible due to the limited production/supply of a good replacement part. In fact, since BMW has been using HPFPs longer than Porsche, some owners have had the pumps replaced more than once. Imagine their despair and dejection. The HPFP is a key component of the DFI engine. You just can't drop any fuel pump into it. That being said, Porsche did replace mine during my first annual service. I think the new one might be going bad as I have recently noticed hesitation when really steping on the gas.

db:
What year is your 997? You had yours replaced a year after delivery?

You would hope that Porsche went to school on BMW's HPFP problems, but I think there are just two sources for these pumps--Bosch and somebody else. If they had a problem with making good pumps for BMW, then I would think Porsche would be subject to the same problems if the supplier was the same and pumps were similar.

On the + side, I think BMW got this straightened out in 2010 or 2011, but I'll have to check the various forums to confirm that.

Mine is a 2009. First year production of the DFI engine. As they say, never buy the first run.

BMW's been struggling with the HPFP for several years now.



"This 2011 BMW 535i Sport Sedan, was reacquired in California by BMW North America after the last retail owner or lessee requested its repurchase.

BMW graciously repurchased the car from the owner and corrected the issues under the manufacturer's warranty. BMW will very commonly repurchase vehicles to ensure a 100% customer satisfaction.

Non-conformity with the warranty reported by original owner: "Vehicle will not start."

BMW performed the following repair(s): "Replaced CAS module, antenna amplifier diversity module, high pressure pump and programmed/encoded vehicle.”



[cgi.ebay.com]

One of the reasons--besides money--that we went with the 328i instead of the 335i in 08 was the HPFP issue that was full blown at the time. I thank my lucky stars that the decision--helped by the info from various BMW forums-- helped us avoid getting involved in the BMW/HPFP fiasco.

Has there been any definitive cause determined on why these pumps were failing? Design issues,Ethanol?
Did the European cars have similar problems?

Leor: Would you mind PMing me your VIN sequential so I can check it against mine?

Driving a new-to-me '09S in Aqua Blue Metallic. It does .5 past light speed. I made the Kessel run in less than 12-parsecs.
Motto: If you have your top up, that storm outside had better have a name!
Motto 2: Having the top up on a convertible is an oxymoron. Don't be a (oxy)moron.