Pump Replacement Questions
 

Some of you may have seen another thread of mine in which I'm having terrible stalling/non starting issues. They've been infuriatingly intermittent, making diagnosis difficult.

Anyway, I managed to finally spot something amiss making me sure there's something up with the fuel pump. When the car was having one of its 'dos', I was turning the ignition to the second position to listen for the priming noise. Nothing was happening, so I went to the back, had a look at the pump and smacked it with a wrench. Lo and behold, it stuttered a couple of times in what seemed like an attempt to prime the system. Got the car started and then the whine of the pump would rise and fall as the car bounced about at idle.

So, on to the replacement. I have two main questions.

Firstly, has anyone else had any difficulty with the large black plastic ring that secures the unit at the top? I cannot for the life of me get it to turn - feels like it might have seized up a bit with gunk. Not even sure it's ever been off before. There's hardly any room to get any real purchase on it.

Secondly, about 10-15 minutes into the job, one of the disconnected fuel lines coughed up about 50-100ml of brown, sticky fuel. Is this returning from the filter or something, or should I be concerned?

You need one of these style tools to get the ring off

link

You may also find the following useful if you didn't know about it
http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/showthread.php?t=9345

In particular the manual about fuel supply system

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...8&d=1420350463

That's rather expensive for one off job. I used blunt chisel with a hammer, just made the end flat on bench grinder.

Looks like I'll have to fashion some sort of tool then.

Thanks for the service docs - had not seen them. Just been following YouTube videos.

There are a few posts on here about Fuel pump, i had issues a while ago and found it a real pita.
Look for ETKA pictures for removal and refitting of the fuel delivery unit, refitting it slightly wrong will either leak fuel, smell of fuel or die at 1/2 to 1/4 tank.
I had to replace some o rings and rather than use the seal kit from Audi i bought some rubber cord and super glued the ends together, also on here somewhere.

I bought a genuine VDO pump from ebay.

Yes, it does seem to be a bit of a pain.

At this point I actually wish I had the cutting out at half empty problem rather than the one I've got :)