Injector failure

I was driving my wife’s three-year-old VW Golf 1.6 TDI and, when I was about seven miles from home, the engine suddenly lost all power. After this, the car would only do a rough tickover. I struggled on at 5mph uphill and then freewheeled down. After arriving home, I plugged in a code reader to find the code ‘P0202’. One of the injectors had an electrical fault with the piezo stack, which I am told cannot be repaired. A new injector from VW would have cost me £420 and the make is Continental type 03L130277B. I bought the same injector from a scrapyard for £73, changed it myself and the car runs as before.

This car has only covered 20,000 miles. I am very disappointed that this could happen and now worry that it could happen again with my wife driving and on a motorway. Do you think that this episode was an unlucky one-off or could it happen again? Is it a known fault? G Owen

Although this is not something I have come across personally, I have found quite few reports of injector failure on similar vehicles. You mention that the vehicle is three years old, so I imagine it is just out of the manufacturer’s warranty. If the vehicle has a full dealer service history, I would contact your local dealer about the problem, as often a goodwill gesture will be made towards the cost of such failures. Unfortunately, there is no preventive measure I can suggest to ensure that the same thing does not occur with the remaining injectors.