DanA100

I wanted to share this with you, hopefully i won't scare anyone who loves his/her old Audi 5000/100/200.

My car is starting to surprise me everyday and most of the time the surprise is a bad one... see what happened yesterday afternoon.
I decidded to go up in the mountains for some mountain biking, i put the bike rack on and i left. Before i left, i stopped at the gas station to put 10 gals of gas. Car was running fine, good stable idle, constant power, no hesitation, no noises. It's been running like this for months/years now. Nothing unusual until i started to go up hill and get into the sharp turns. First time - i lost power without a warning sign - the car just stopped accelerating up the hill for 4-5 seconds. Then everything was fine again. !!!? I kept going up the hill thinking that it could be bad gas. 5 mins later, same thing happened but this time car lost power for longer and it died on me. I started it without a problem and i kept going up. Couldn't figure out why it was doing it. There was no strange noise, weird idle or anything. 2 minutes later, car died again and i was lucky to park it on the side of the road. Couldn't start it anymore! Tried to start it 10-12 times before i gave up.

Right away, i suspected the fuel pump. I know that my fuel pump relay is 2 months old, so i didn't even bother replacing it. Lucky me, my dad was home, 20 miles away and i had a spare fuel pump in his garage. Called him, he brought it and an hour later my car was running like a champ! It was the fuel pump!

So, here is the scary and sad conclusion - a fuel pump can fail just like that, no warning signs, no noises, no hesitation. Even worse, this fuel pump had only 85k miles on it and i've always put high quality gas in my car! It left me on the side of the road just like that. I'm lucky that i had a spare pump and nice warm weather.

How is this possible??? I kind of lost some respect for my old Audi, it let me down for the first time.

Btw, the car has 180k miles and for the last 4 weeks i have replaced a PS pump, a radiator, a Cat and now a Fuel pump. This can't be normal?!?!

RussB

Audis always seem to find new ways to fail. They provide good entertainment.

Q: Do you make a habit of filling your gas tank until it's full? I've read speculation that doing so may be good for the pump.

Will Ng

Quite normal, sorry to say.

moving violation

I have a 1 month old fuel pump cheap. email if you want it.

DanA100

I'm not planning to replace the fuel pump on this car one more time....i'll replace the car before i do it. Plus, i put an almost new pump.
Thanks for the offer anyway.

DanA100

i try to have at least 1/4 of tank of gas....never run the car on almost empty. Usually its 1/2 or more.
I've heard before that having more than 1/2 tank of gas all the time is good for the pump because it cools it better = provides longer fuel pump life. Well, didn't prove to be true with my car. Pump failed with less than 90k miles on it.

v8phil

mine was last week.

ovalking

Dan, This type of problem could have been loads of things, how did you know it was the pump?
When you say there was no noises, do you mean it was totally silent so that's how you knew?
Or just a lucky guess? :-)

shortyq

A couple of things...

Audi has a TSB on the Fuel pumps on 87-89 5k/100/200 <all> regarding fuel tank liner material decomposing and clogging the secondary screen (the one that sits on the bottom of the pump). The TSB says to cut the screen off the bottom of the pump before re/installing it.

I've also seen fuel pumps that the screen was just clogged from bad gas. ALL new fuel pumps still come with screen. It isn't a necessary item as the fuel pump sits in a filtered pocket anyhow.

Also, many misdiagnose the fuel pump for the fuel pump ck valve on top of it. These can creat all sorts of fuel delivery related problems.

HTH

Scott Justusson
QSHIPQ Performance Tuning