Fuel Injection System Error
 

Hey all, long time listener, first time caller.

We have a 2005 e53 diesel, I'm in love with it, however on the drive home today after putting some fresh tyres on it the car lost all power and flashed up with the inject. system error. Luckily we had enough momentum to cruise out of the way of traffic and pull over somewhere out of the way. I shut down the car completely and tried to start it again a few times with no luck (it would just crank away but not fire up).

A quick google later and I had accepted it was something i probably wasnt going to be able to resolve on the side of the road so I was going to have to call a tow truck. I thought "I'll give it one more shot before I do" and as I turned the key she fired back to life like nothing had happened. Drove about 10 minutes home without incident, then shut it off in my driveway. Tried to start it again about a minute later after opening my front gate and no luck, It would just sit there cranking over as if it had no fuel (not throwing any errors or anything).

10 minutes later the wife went out to move it and it fired up with no problem straight away.

Being so intermittent I imagine its going to be a nightmare to try and diagnose, so I'm wondering if anyone has experienced this behaviour and would be able to point me directly to the culprit to save me alot of time and hassle chasing ghosts around an engine bay.

Sounds like a fuel pump on the way out. Diesel have two, one to move the fuel to the engine compartment and one to pressurize to high pressure for injection into the cylinders. Could be either but hope and pray it's the low pressure pump it's a lot less expensive.

How many estimate hours (divide odometer by average speed)

If they are the original pumps, I'd say probably 9000-9500 hours.

The low pressure fuel pump should last about 5000 hours. 9000 hours would be about 240,000 miles, what did you use for average speed and distance?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

From the onboard computer I got an average speed of 32.7kph (20.3mph) and distance was 300,000 km (186400 miles)

Actually, there's three fuel pumps on our 2005 3.0d E53.... One electric pump in the tank, one in-line electric pump in front of the tank and then the main high pressure mechanical pump bolted to the engine (HPFP).

Here's the in-line pump...

https://c1552172.ssl.cf0.rackcdn.com/13795_x800.webp
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bGj92asy9U8/maxresdefault.jpg

This "injector" fault could be caused by any of them. Or a clogged fuel filter. Or a failed fuel rail pressure sensor, fuel rail pressure regulator or fuel flow regulator.

A scan of the DDE error codes with INPA or PASoft etc. would go a long way to reducing the number of possiblities...

Sounds like a fun one to track down...I wouldn't imagine it to be the mechanical hpfp as its an intermittent issue? I would imagine the mechanical hpfp to just fail and thats that?

I plugged a simple scan tool in and got no codes from that, currently awaiting a friend to bring their laptop and software around to dive deeper for codes.

Most likely right but there is a flow regulation solenoid on the back of the HPFP that can fail in this mode...

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/xDIAA...WNq/s-l300.jpg

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/Cb4AA...p4~/s-l300.jpg

yay, guess im stuck waiting for my friend with his software then...Thanks for the input so far, I will update once I have more information.

The hard core test I found for fuel pumps didn't test diesel only E0 E10 E20. The avg lifespan on those are 4000,5000,6000 hours.

If diesel is similar to gas in lifespan you are just about perfectly due for pump #2. (main tank pump).

If running on the original, that would be literally exceptional (or previous owner drove a lot of highway miles and the actual average speed is closer to 40 mph)

Stand outside there car when off on the starboard side and turn the key to on and listen under the right rear seat for the fuel pump. It should whirr for about six seconds then stop.

No whirr; for sure it's the low pressure pump. The problem is when it's intermittent. So; if you get a no start, than leave the door open so you can stand outside and listen for the pump and try several times turning the key to off then on. If the pump fires up it's either the pump or the ignition switch. (I've never heard of the ignition switch failure to cause a stall while driving but if the right contact opens it would be the same as turning the key to off)

Interesting on the quantify of pumps: the "diesel block diagram" combines the high pressure stuff into one black box: I've never worked on a diesel x5

Have you ever had a no start situation before the moving stall?