'93 Eurovan 2.5 died on the highway. Potential fuel cause? *contains lots of Eurovan DIY info*

[the brit]

**Decided to document this as well as possible to help people with various jobs in the future*

Dignosis continued on posts below - van is still not running

Things I've written about so far:

• How to remove Eurovan 2.5 Fuel Pump.
• Eurovan 2.5 fuel pump relay location and testing.
• Fuel Pump alternative replacement sources.
• How to hardwire a 16 pin modern diagnostic port to a '93 pre-OBD2 Eurovan.

Was driving along at 55mph, suddenly lost power and engine died. It wouldn't restart, and I couldn't hear the fuel pump running but was at the side of the road. As I was only a few miles from home, I towed it back and started checking it out today.

Power at the fuel pump relay? Yes.
Jump the relay - Power at the pump connector? Yes.
Test the relay connections anyway - Everything good? Yes.
Good ground at the pump? Yes.
Final test of the pump with jumped relay? Nothing.

Damn.

So I guess the pump just decided to give out with no warning. The screen has a little bit of debris on it, but nothing unusual. There were no warning noises at all, although the van was verrry slow (which I blame on the engine, not the fuel pump).

I do remember the previous owner saying that he had the fuel pump replaced within the last year, but the pump seems to have markings that would suggest a build date of late 2007. Of course I didn't keep the fuel pump from the old van.

[the brit]

The fuel pump unit in a 2.5 Eurovan petrol engine is a in-tank unit. The tank access panel is located between the front seats, just to the passenger side of the e-brake handle. You do *not* need to remove the seats to access, test and replace the tank.

[b] DIY for replacing the fuel pump.

1. While in the center of the van, looking forwards between the front seats, pry up the front carpet section in the middle of the seats. You're aiming to find a black metal circular cover, held in by three philips screws. You may need to remove the trim from the e-brake handle.

2. Now that you can see the cover, you should be able to see three 13mm bolts that are holding the e-brake handle. I decided to remove these bolts so the handle could be moved out of the way for better access.

3. Now the carpet is folded forwards, you can remove the three philips head screws on the black cover. I decided to 'split' (rip) the carpet very slightly, where it's most narrow just behind the e-brake handle. This allowed me to really move it all of the way clear. Anyway, remove those three screws, and lift the cover off.

4. Now you can see the top of the fuel inlet/outlet cover. There's two fuel hoses (1 in, 1 out) and a single 4 pin connector. Remove all of these.

FOR STEPS 5 UNTIL THE END, THIS IS THE SAME JOB AS A Mk3 GOLF/JETTA.
5. The cover is secured by the large black plastic ring. You will see that it has ridges on the top of it. If you have a large enough pair of pliars, or the Dealer tool, use them, if not get a large flathead screwdriver and a hammer. Place the flathead against a comfortable to reach ridge and hit with a hammer to start to move the ring anti-clockwise just as you would undo a nut from a bolt.

6. Continue to move the ring around until it frees and can be removed fully. Once it's undone, you can lift it off, and then remove the cover. The seal will likely come with it.

7. You now have the cover removed, but it's still attached to the actual fuel pump sending unit. This is secured to the bottom of the tank by 4 tabs. To remove it, simply grab it and turn it. I think it's clockwise, but don't remember.. but it's one way or the other.

8. Once it's twisted clear, you can remove the cover, the hoses, the fuel level sender, the wiring and the pump sender all in one piece. It's a little tricky to remove all of this through the hole in the fuel tank, but do the cover/level sender first, then the sender pump last and it'll all fit.

Do the reverse to install, making sure to have the seal installed before the cover goes in.


REPLACEMENT FUEL PUMP SENDING UNIT IS THE EXACT SAME AS A Mk3 Golf/JETTA 2.0 1993-1996, amongst others..!


1H0919651P is the part number for the actual fuel pump unit if anyone needs it in the future.

[the brit]

Fuel Pump Relay

The fuel pump relay for a 1993 Eurovan 2.5 Petrol is the bottom right relay, when looking at the main fuse panel. It *should* be labelled 80, and should have four pins - two large pins (usually copper coloured), and two smaller pins (one much smaller, usually both silver coloured).

To by-pass a fuel pump relay, you can use a home-made wire with a spade connector on each end. You will use it in the place of the two large copper coloured connectors, of which the one of the right (passenger side) should have +12v at all times the ignition is on, and the left side connector which goes to the fuel pump and the O2 sensor.

You may want to install a fuse in the middle of this temporary wire.

[the brit]

So, the van's still not running. There's more afoot than the fuel pump.

The van cranks great, with a strong spark on the #1 spark plug wire that I checked with a temporary spark plug. The fuel pump relay input is getting +12v at the 'ON' position, but this falls to +8v when at the start position.. I cannot hear the fuel pump running either. The ground checks out, and a resistance check on the wires appear okay too. Damn.

I charged the battery, which had fallen to about 11.8v from all the testing but as I ran out of light I tried cranking it in despiration - nothing. I'll test the voltage again tomorrow. I've been meaning to do a fuel filter, so I'll install a new one tomorrow too.

Now, diagnosis. I got the van with a bad ignition switch, and it would take about 10-15 cranks to start from cold. It would do this hard start routine every time, but would always start. It was also quite low on power compared to my old van.. Possibly fuel related, but also - maybe someone did a bad job in the past and mis-timed the van, having the belt off by a tooth or the timing wrong would do this. But i'm going to assume that because I had the instant failure and it would always start eventually in the past, that I'm going to be able to get it back to that state.

Tomorrow's jobs will be:

replace fuel filter,
test/replace ignition switch,
possibly remove and visually inspect spark plug from the engine [unknown service history].

I welcome and hope for any insight in the meantime!

[84GTi Guy]

Have you checked the fuel pressure regulator. I had one go on my corrado and the car wold not start. Just an idea and I did not see it mentioned on your list.

[84GTi Guy]

Also have you had a VAG-COM scan done? This can also tell you a lot.

[the brit]

I haven't checked the FPR - I do have a known good spare one, and can also check the pressure, but with the fuel not working i'm stuck still..

Also have you had a VAG-COM scan done? This can also tell you a lot.

I have a full vagcom, but because it's a early van it has the 2x2 connector which i've never used before. I have this prejudice against anything with that connector, which means I assume it'll give me little to no information.. I should check into that though!

[the brit]

I have a full vagcom, but because it's a early van it has the 2x2 connector which i've never used before. I have this prejudice against anything with that connector, which means I assume it'll give me little to no information.. I should check into that though!

I'm going to hardwire a 16 pin diagnostic port to my '93, and then try giving it a scan.


For anyone needing the pins for this in the future, here's a link and the information:

http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/images/2x2.gif
http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/images/DLC_Pinout.gif

[84GTi Guy]

The 2x2 connector is actually really good in these cars, vw was ahead on the curve well before obdII. On my old 92 corrado I had it gave me lots of info on the engine and brake modules (which helped me find the bad ABS sensor). And the 2x2 adapter from rosstech is worth every penny. but you can find cheaper ones on ebay now a days ebay link

[the brit]

The 2x2 connector is actually really good in these cars, vw was ahead on the curve well before obdII. On my old 92 corrado I had it gave me lots of info on the engine and brake modules (which helped me find the bad ABS sensor). And the 2x2 adapter from rosstech is worth every penny. but you can find cheaper ones on ebay now a days ebay link

I missed off the second photo above, which contains the 16 pin OBD port pin listings. By cutting the 2x2 connectors, and hooking the wires up to the correct pins on the 16 pin version it'll work correctly through the modern connection without needing a adapter.

Thanks for letting me know about what to expect from the ECU - I was not expecting much at all in terms of what it would be able to report on.

[gti_matt]

If you pull the center wire off the distributor so you get no spark, pull a spark plug and crank the engine a bit. Do you smell fuel at all? If no, definitely no fuel reaching the cylinders. If yes, then you have fuel.

I wonder if the fuel pump might be working but the ECU isn't telling the injectors to open?

[VW_Enthu1]

VW is known for using older parts. I think that date stamp (49/07) actually means "July, 1949". I don't want to alarm you or anything....

[the brit]

Well, the van's running again. I will do a build thread soon, once I start bolting all the european goodies on, and get time to do rust repair/paint work etc.

In the meantime, here's what I did; I'll make a how-to on the fuel filter once I get the photos up later.

Sprayed the fuel filter retaining screw with WD40 and let it sit to soak.

While I waited, I pulled #1 spark plug to visually inspect it - yesterday I did the spark test with a fresh plug hooked up with one of the wires from the van, so I hadn't pulled a plug. The plug looked like trash. The gap was about 1.8mm, which is a good 1mm bigger than it should be. The colour wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either - it looked a bit rich, but more importantly both parts looked very worn.

So I pulled all five plugs and replaced them with fresh Bosch plugs. The Bentley manual doesn't seem to list a gap for the plugs (or at least I couldn't find it), so I left them as they came out of the box which just happened to be about where i'd normally set them - 0.75mm, give or take 5 hundreth of a mm. The wires look okay, but due to the ancient state of the plugs I'll likely replace the cap and rotor asap.

I then replaced the fuel filter.

Yesterday I had jumped the old fuel pump to test it, and it did nothing for about 3-4 seconds then jumped into life. Perhaps it was locked, maybe something else was going on, but I put it does as 'weird' and let it go.

Today I jumped the replacement pump and got nothing. So I went to pull it, but upon opening the tank I saw that one of the wires was loose at the pump end. I secured it correctly, closed everything up and jumped the pump - it worked great.

I then tried to start the van with the pump connected up to the normal relay, and it started in 1-2 cranks i.e. perfectly.

So.. what caused it? Well, i'm not quite sure. Perhaps the old pump did seize temporarily. There was definately some debris on the filter screen in the tank so there's something going on in there, and I do suspect that although the previous owner had a "new" pump installed it absolutely looks like the old filter was not replaced at the same - maybe it was clogged to the point of slowing/stopping flow (it didn't appear to be completely clogged). It could also be that the fuel setup was not keeping pressure - i'll have to wait a little before I can try to restart the van fresh to check it out.

It does not appear to be anything to do with the ignition switch, and obviously I do not believe that the spark plugs would have been worn enough to stop the van in its tracks so that hopefully leaves either the filter or the pump. I do however think that the difficulty in starting prior to that would have been the spark plugs.

[84GTi Guy]

Good to hear, now run the VAGCOM and see what codes are stored.

[the brit]

Good to hear, now run the VAGCOM and see what codes are stored.

Got to grab a 16 pin connector from a junkyard first.

[vwsurf]

I just changed out my original fuel pump on my 93 Van. It looks a little different then the one in the above pics. The pics I took are from the original fuel pump with bad wires and it was also dead. I also took a pic of the access panel. My new fuel pump looks just like the one above. Found it on eBay $87.00 shipped.

[yumeemiru]

Had the same thing happen to me today when I was driving to work on the highway going 60. It quit without warning and I couldnt restart it. Cranked fine and there was no smell of gas (which is usually what happens when the pump goes out? Right? ) so I am glad I came across this because I can reference this thread to find my problem. Thanks!