Running the "Initial Fuel Filling" routine to prime the injection system after running out of fuel.

If you run the CR TDi engine out of fuel you cannot prime the system using the ignition key on post 2009 vehicles, it has to be done via an Adaptation channel on VCDS.

This is because there are 3 fuel pumps, the tank lift pump, the transfer pump after the fuel filter and the engine driven mechanical injection pump.

The 2 electric pumps can be run from Output Tests but to bleed the fuel system they both need to be running at the same time or the fuel filter would run dry when running the second pump, hence the Initial Fuel Filling procedure.

All the videos show it as channel 35 but that is an older VCDS version, on mine I eventually found it as IDE00470-ENG9891-Initial fuel filling.

Trouble is it just will not run at all, you have to input a filling time, it says 1-3 digits, units are maked as s (seconds I assume) I chose 60 as thats what the videos did, then I had to input a fuel level, units L and again 1-3 digits, does this mean how much fuel is in the tank?? VCDS knows anyway.

I selected 7 litres as thats what measuring blocks showed the fuel level to be after filling with the jerrycan, it refused to operate and gave a message in red ERROR: Conditions not correct or request sequence error.

I added more fuel and tried again using the 17 litres which VCDS then indicated was in the tank, same problem, same message.

No matter what numbers I put it it would not run at all.

I towed the car home and was going to manually activate the relays but one was inaccessible and behind the dash, I then ran the tank pump for 45 second then the transfer pump for 30 seconds and repeated the cycle 5 times finishing with another 45 seconds of the tank pump.

The engine did not star immediately but after 30 seconds I could see the injector line pressure start to rise to the regulated pressure and the engine started.

I had been running the pumps one at a time where it broke down and I reckon I did not allow it to crank long enough, I was being overly cautious for fear of pump and system damage which I now realise is an old wives tale, back at home I could verify that the filter bowl was full etc.

Has anyone managed to make this nonsense routine actually do what it is supposed to do and run both the electric fuel pumps simultaneously?