I've been looking at a few used T3 2011 Touareg TDi's for sale lately, and with every one I look at, I request to see the service records, complete on all of them.
The 2011, of course is the first year of production for this model in North America, and it's pretty common knowledge that 1st year model VW's have a lot of problematic bugs and programming in them that need updates or replacement.
One of the most frequent failures is the ad blue reduction pump, heating elements, and nozzles. In the beginning, VW replaced the whole pump when it failed. By 2012, they noticed that a lot of the heating elements were the culprits for failure. The Urea needs to be preheated before injection. One of the issues is having a tank run low, or refilling, seems to damage the heating element and cause it to fail, not heating the fluid properly. When the fluid is not heated enough, and the SCR system continues to run, from you driving it with the Check Engine Light on, you end up destroying the nozzle valve also, with clogged up corrosive crystal urea particles destroying the nozzles.
Nozzle lists currently at a dealership I callled with P/N 3C0-131-113-C @ $266.40.
Replacement heater element is P/N 7P6-198-970 @ $335.66.
My point is that maybe pouring all that DEF in there with a rush of fluid is damaging the heating element, many seem to fail right after a refill, so use the proper bottles and tools to refill your Adblu tanks.
Another is that running your tank low may cause the heating element to overheat and burn up or short out the electrical element inside. So keep your DEF tanks full and topped off, not empty.
I was quoted about $1500 in parts and labor to R&R this stuff. Don't know how accurate that figure is, but TDI owners need to be smart about owning and maintaining their diesels.
My other thought is that VW's vendors are making cheap, failure prone parts that have a short MTBF.
All of this is theory... one thing I think will be for certain, this is a failure prone part, and we need to learn the VCDS codes and symptoms to fix and resolve the problems... which is where knowledgeable posters here that have had the failures should post up all VCDS codes from their invoices, and all the parts off of their parts Bill OF Material to fix these under warranty, to establish a knowledge base, instead of it just being theory. These are new systems, we all need to learn together.
The 2011, of course is the first year of production for this model in North America, and it's pretty common knowledge that 1st year model VW's have a lot of problematic bugs and programming in them that need updates or replacement.
One of the most frequent failures is the ad blue reduction pump, heating elements, and nozzles. In the beginning, VW replaced the whole pump when it failed. By 2012, they noticed that a lot of the heating elements were the culprits for failure. The Urea needs to be preheated before injection. One of the issues is having a tank run low, or refilling, seems to damage the heating element and cause it to fail, not heating the fluid properly. When the fluid is not heated enough, and the SCR system continues to run, from you driving it with the Check Engine Light on, you end up destroying the nozzle valve also, with clogged up corrosive crystal urea particles destroying the nozzles.
Nozzle lists currently at a dealership I callled with P/N 3C0-131-113-C @ $266.40.
Replacement heater element is P/N 7P6-198-970 @ $335.66.
My point is that maybe pouring all that DEF in there with a rush of fluid is damaging the heating element, many seem to fail right after a refill, so use the proper bottles and tools to refill your Adblu tanks.
Another is that running your tank low may cause the heating element to overheat and burn up or short out the electrical element inside. So keep your DEF tanks full and topped off, not empty.
I was quoted about $1500 in parts and labor to R&R this stuff. Don't know how accurate that figure is, but TDI owners need to be smart about owning and maintaining their diesels.
My other thought is that VW's vendors are making cheap, failure prone parts that have a short MTBF.
All of this is theory... one thing I think will be for certain, this is a failure prone part, and we need to learn the VCDS codes and symptoms to fix and resolve the problems... which is where knowledgeable posters here that have had the failures should post up all VCDS codes from their invoices, and all the parts off of their parts Bill OF Material to fix these under warranty, to establish a knowledge base, instead of it just being theory. These are new systems, we all need to learn together.
