Wolf Island Diver
Well-Known Member
I don’t think there really are any new notifications anyway and when there are everyone will probably get a letter or notification from their dealer. I think the sign up is part courtesy from FCA to give customers who were missed by the required notification an opportunity to receive updates and part theater.
This is where I am with this whole situation:
The 3-5% failure rate doesn’t concern me as much as the albatross of a safety recall hanging over my $100k vehicle does. I’m not concerned that my truck is going to die. I’m concerned that if it does, I’ll never get it back and that I can’t sell it if I wanted to. To be clear I don’t blame NHTSA. FCA wouldn’t have ever addressed this if it wasn’t for the regulator. But this recall has put everyone in a bind.
The “waiting on parts” status is BS. They don’t wait to manufacture all new CP4.2 pumps they will need first and then roll them out. This is major liability for FCA and there’s already lawsuits pending. If a “hardened” pump was the solution, they would install them as they’re produced to the three constituencies (folks who’s vehicles are sitting at a dealerships waiting on parts, dealerships who can’t sell their stock, everyone who’s vehicle is drivable but falls under the recall)
I think the possibilities as to the state of things are as follows:
1. Bosch is engineering a new pump or modification/fix for the old pump: I think this is highly unlikely. Bosch wont admit that there’s anything wrong with the current pump despite years of problems across multiple brands.
2. Jeep/motori is engineering a rollback to CP3: even less likely because you just don’t swap out pumps. There’s a ton of costly engineering that goes into this. The CP3 rollback was Cummins as others have stated.
3. FCA/motori is engineering the same fix GDE has implemented: more likely
4. Jeep et al is fighting with Bosch over disabling the operating mode detailed by GDE that results in cavitation: more likely. However I’m not completely sure why Bosch needs to agree to this unless it’s more about financial responsibility or Jeep expects Bosch to engineer the fix. But don’t discount the possibility of this boiling down to companies squabbling over liability for a problem. This happens all the time.
5. There is no good technical solution. Possibly the software solution isn’t full proof enough to satisfy the regulator. NHTSA has put FCA in a bind so they can’t just ignore it which would certainly have been their preferred course of action. FCA is still trying to figure out what to do. Having worked for some major corporations, having no clue what to do when a problem arises and passing the buck to some other or future executive for an expensive decision is more common than not.
I think we have to take a step back and consider some things:
Executives, and therefore everyone else as FCA, don’t answer to customers. They answer to shareholders. JT/JL diesel owners represent a tiny subset of FCAs customers. They absolutely have run the numbers on buying back these vehicles as part of a suite of options. That’s 100% guaranteed. The more time and money that’s spent trying to find a solution, the more likely FCA is to write off these vehicles as they reach that threshold, if they haven’t already.
I think a buyback is the most likely outcome. If you’re like me and bought yours when they were 10k cheaper and at 2% financing and then added 40k in aftermarket mods and fabricated tons of stuff, you’re going to take a major haircut on this deal. My locality just assessed my truck at $10k more than last year and every Virginian pays 4.5% sales tax every single year in the form of personal property tax. That’s $1800 a year for me. If mine was dead, sitting in a dealers lot, I’d be apoplectic.
Since I really wanted this to be a long term adventure vehicle, at least until a really compelling solid state battery powered version is produced (if ever), I’m probably going the GDE route. $1700 isn’t very much to me with the extra ECU. I’m less interested in a modified pump that possibly introduces it’s own issues, but I need to do more research. I may go the GDE route in August.
The one question I still have is that I’m still a little hazy on whether dealerships can replace the CP4.2 with another one if it fails, or if you have to wait for the vaporware permanent solution. I keep reading conflicting stories on that. My dealership says don’t worry, if it blows, they will just replace the fuel system and pump. But that might not be true, or not true anymore. If they’ll just fix it with another CP4.2 and let me go on my way, I’m going to keep keeping my powder dry. However, if it’s true that once she blows you lose your vehicle to the back lot of some dealership, pending a solution, then it comes down to weighing that 3-5% chance of losing your vehicle with the warranty implications of the dealer discovering you’re running a tuned ECU and that’s assuming the GDE fix truly address/mitigates the problem. If my truck was out of warranty, it would already have a GDE tune anyway. If I wasn’t already married to this platform, loyal to Jeep, etc., I dump this thing like an ugly blind date.
p.s., I think it’s clear now, given the cavitation issue discussed by a number of technicians that actually work on these things, this isn’t a fuel lubricity issue and additives probably don’t prevent the failure, regardless of what weak correlation some forum polling shows. This is a poorly engineered fuel pump coupled with an operating mode that increases its chance of failure.
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