twentysevenlitres

I think I've found the problem!

Brian, If I'd accepted your bet, you'd be ordering me a pint of Old Speckled Hen!

Hopefully these photo's come up:

Took a bit of finding, but the pump was mounted correctly. after jury-rigging my hotwire direct battery feed to the pump with a toggle switch, I was able to look in the tank through the sender hole to see my problem:
Fuel was spraying out of the crack in the high pressure hose instead of going down the high pressure line!

twentysevenlitres

By the condition of the hose, I'd say that tear has been there a while - probably the root cause of all my problems... I'm amazed the car ran!
So I performed a repair:

twentysevenlitres

I got this repair finished at 10.40pm.

At 12.40am I was still trying to get the damn pump into the tank and was getting frustrated and just a little bit high!
So I called it a night!

Conclusion to follow if I don't smash the pump to pieces with frustration tomorrow afternoon!

Martin

BrianC72gt

Good man! That's a tricky one to find. I had a similar problem when one of my pickup hoses on the bottom of the tank was not secured properly, by me of course, when I had it all out. If you have a smooth fuel injection hose clamp you might want to swap it out with the one you are using. Not critical though. The smooth ones don't leave bite marks and give more uniform pressure/sealing. The serrated worm drive can allow slight leakage. OK in the tank...really bad idea up on the rail.

Good luck getting her buttoned up. If you ever make it to the US of A, Northern California, give me a shout...I owe you a pint.


Brian

silverd2

Wow, Marty...good find! I don't think anyone could have predicted that.

The only fuel pump I've ever had to change (other than a mechanical pump on a '73 VW Micro Bus...easy) was the in-tank transfer pump on my dog's '90 Passat wagon...10-15 minute job...wonderful simplicity, kind of...there's another pump...the pressurizing pump under the car, but also really easy to get at.

I haven't even had to change my D2 pump yet, but already hate the convoluted design....LOVE the car, though.

Let us know if the car does well...I think you've found the source of all your present ills, though.

Cheers,

Sam

twentysevenlitres

Just a vent here - I've spent three hours trying to get the frigging pump back into the tank - got it sitting square an inch and a half out of the tank and can't get it to go down or seat - If I turn it to either side, I can get it further down on an angle, but then can't get it back! Scared of breaking something!
I have just pulled it back out a half doaen times and I can't see whats snagging it or why I can't manouvre it into position - man this is giving me the irrates!

twentysevenlitres

OK... I've found yet another thing the procedure doesn't mention!
The suction pump reservoir that supposedly "floats free" inside the tank, doesn't quite!

Turns out there's a hook on the top of the reservoir which needs to hook over the filler inlet tube at the top centre of the tank - you can't really see it, but it's easy to find with your hand (round tubey thing with a 90 degree bend at the end and some serrations I think).
There's a 2/3rds complete rond hook on the reservior which simply hooks over the filler tube and suspends the reservoir above the saddle.
If the reservoir isn't hung up, the reservoir sits on the bottom of the saddle and (as it turns out) is nearly impossible to mate the pump housing to!

I wasted 3 1/2 - 4 hours of my life to bring you this little piece of wisdom, because guess what, within 5 minutes of this discovery, I had the pump perfectly in position!


So having nearly gone mad and on my second petrol high in as many days (and I'm off to work in an hour - oh dear!) I hooked up the high pressure line and put my pump hotwire back on the pump and battery and fired her up!
The pump immediately took on a more purposeful sound, so I ran it for 10 seconds and went for a look under the bonnet at my container lodged under the fuel pressure regulator - it was full (lucky I didn't run the full 15 secs Audi recommends)!
So I plugged everything back in and turned the key... Second turn of the starter she fired into life!

The 1 week saga is over, Hooray!

Here's some last pics:
My full fuel container (sigh of relief at that one!) and do you guys like my hotwire for the pump?

Adjuster

Glad to see you won the battle, and solved the problem.

I have had some fun with the fuel system, and gave up trying to pull the pump, but just put an external pump in line just after the fuel filter.

Seems to be working great, but does make some noise, and as long as it runs, I'm happy I don't have to pull the tank, or dril/cut my pump out as the bolt just turns and turns...

twentysevenlitres

Sam and Brian,

I'd like to thank both of you for your inputs to this saga - you helped me confirm that what I was doing was right and gave me some tests to perform, and that led me to the discovery of the broken hose.

Come to Melbourne and I'll buy you both a beer!

Now we just need to see if it'll run down to a low tank level (I'm right at half, so hard to judge if it's sucking air yet - shouldn't be, I checked the suction tube with my scope...)

Oh, and Brian, that worm drive clamp is supposedly a fuel injection one - It has a wide smooth inner surface.
I ordered a pile of stainless (both the bolt and nut style and the worm drive ones) prior to doing this job as I didn't want to submerge zinc plated cheapies in fuel inside the tank.

I used the worm drive one in that instance mainly because space was at a premium, but also I used the normal nut and bolt clamps elsewhere and wanted to try it out.

Cheers

Marty

twentysevenlitres

Yeah, I had a good look at the fancy metal rubber gasket. From my experience thus far, I reckon the rubber portion is designed to squash flat. Because when I tightened my bolt down, it reached a hard point where it didn't want to tighten anymore (ie, when you're trying to squash metal, not rubber anymore). I left it at that point.

If anyone over tightens at that point you'd risk distorting/cracking the housing or breaking loose the captive nut.

Just my mad and slightly high 2c!