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I'm here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
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Vancouver's best auto service experience.
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We're talking cars.
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How are you doing, Bernie?
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Today's guest is a 2015 Audi A3.
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What was happening with this vehicle?
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So the vehicle owner's complaint was that when he'd go to fill his fuel tank up, he
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couldn't put any gas into it because as soon as he'd start filling it, the nozzle would
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Fuel nozzles have an automated system if the pressure's too high, I guess, feeding back
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and thinks the gas tank's full.
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So anyways, it had been going on for quite a while, but it was getting worse to the point
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where he couldn't even put any more fuel into the vehicle or barely anything.
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So just hold the nozzle on, it would just click off.
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Hold it and you'd get a few drops of fuel here and there.
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So it was pretty critical.
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So that sensor in the gas feed nozzle is detecting gas vapor pressure because it's not fuel coming
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back if the tank is empty?
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I think it's detecting there's too much back pressure.
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I assume that's the way they work.
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I'm not an expert on fuel nozzles, but they seem to work pretty accurately when you put
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it in a tank and you put on auto and you go to fill it once it reaches a certain fullness
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level, it just clicks off.
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So anyways, that was happening.
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There was something wrong with the car.
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We see it from time to time on various vehicles.
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And all because gasoline is a very fumable, flammable, fumable, flammable and fumable
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So there's our beautiful car 2015.
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So it's over 10 years old now, but still looks like a brand new car.
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Well maintained, low mileage too.
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So this is an important thing.
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So right on the gas cap, do not top off.
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So what's supposed to happen is when you fill your car and this is not just for
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outies, this is for every car.
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When the gas nozzle clicks off, you don't go, oh, I think I'll add a couple of more
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dollars worth of fuel or I'll top it up or no, it's $49.50.
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Let's make it $50 even.
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Because what happens is you get expensive repairs in the end.
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And this is the case with this Audi.
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So even though your car may not say do not top off all cars, if you read the owner's
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manual, it will say that somewhere.
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It's just even more acute on this Audi.
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So they know there's actually a kind of serious issue with this system, the way
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Now we're looking at the other side.
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Yeah, we'll just jump right to the repair.
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So the owner had taken it to an Audi dealer and they had recommended
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replacing the fuel tank, filler assembly, charcoal canister, everything.
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The estimate was enormous.
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Yeah, the fuel tank, fuel filler, neck, the whole nine yards.
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And there's a lot of dealerships that do good work, but sometimes their repair
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recommendations are just a little too, let's just change everything.
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And it was a lot of money, like multiple thousands of dollars to do all the work.
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So he brought it to us for a second opinion.
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We had a look at it, diagnosed it.
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And from our repair research and information, the most common problem when
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this happens is the charcoal canister gets flooded full of fuel.
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And that's what's causing the thing to click off.
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I said, Hey, you know what?
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Maybe you do need a fuel tank or filler neck, but let's do this part first,
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which is still expensive and substantially cheaper.
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So the green arrow is pointing to the fuel tank filler neck.
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Yeah, that picture we looked out of the fuel cap, basically that fuel cap is
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just right above where that arrow is.
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So this is sticking outside the car.
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This is inside the wheel well.
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Yeah, this is inside the wheel well with the wheel cover off.
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So that's the fuel filler neck.
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And right below that arrow, you can see a plastic pipe with an elbow
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That's the vent pipe to the charcoal canister.
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So we'll talk about what the charcoal canister is in a minute, but essentially
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there's supposed to be no liquid fuel inside the charcoal canister.
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And of course, you can see how high up on the filler neck this is.
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It's pretty easy if you were to keep topping the fuel up further to be liquid
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in the line, and that would end up pouring inside the charcoal canister.
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OK, as we were discussing before we started, I've never heard of the charcoal
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canister. So what the heck is this thing?
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The charcoal canisters basically there to trap gasoline vapors.
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If you've ever looked at on sunny, hot day, gasoline is evaporates.
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It's very volatile liquid.
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And that's actually bad for the environment.
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Like really bad creates a lot of smog and pollutants.
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Auto engineers many years ago discovered that if we can trap those gasoline vapors,
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it prevents it from getting out into the air and pollution that's associated with it.
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So what the charcoal canister does is it performs that function.
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The fuel system is now sealed.
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So when you put fuel in your gas tank, you put the cap on that system sealed.
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There's nothing that can escape into the environment, into the atmosphere.
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Any vapors that come out of the gasoline go into this charcoal canister
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and then the engine will actually at certain points will actually suck the vapour out
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and burn it up in the engine.
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I believe that's what that little white pipe that you can see there does.
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That actually goes up to the engine and is burnt.
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The computer controls when the canister is open.
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It's called a purge valve.
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So here we have the new charcoal canister OEM dealer part,
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which is the only place we were able to source it from.
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And if we look at one more picture further up, we can see the old one,
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which looks exactly the same.
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But the interesting thing is when we removed it from the vehicle,
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you could feel the weight of fuel inside it.
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You could feel it was saturated with liquid.
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It was just noticeably heavier than the replacement unit.
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But it was even apparent even before we had the two to compare them.
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Something feels heavy on this thing.
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And it's not supposed to actually have fuel in it.
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It's supposed to be vapor only that the carbon is catching.
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Yeah, the carbon is a sponge that kind of captures the vapor and retains it.
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So this is the thing when, again, when you're fueling your vehicle up,
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when the gas nozzle clicks off, stop right there.
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Unless you've got a problem, of course, like this vehicle had,
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in which case you have to nurse the fuel into the system.
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But to void it, if you just stop filling it when the cap clicks off,
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don't worry about the extra 50 cents surrounded off.
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Yeah, or dollar or whatever.
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Sometimes you can cram an extra dollar or two, but it's not really worth it.
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When you add it all up and often like to do the math when I think of cars,
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this vehicle has got 61,000 kilometers.
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How much does this repair cost?
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You don't save any money by putting more fuel into it.
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It's just prevents you from having to fill up more often.
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Lately more often in the life of the car, maybe two or three times more time.
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Yeah, two or three times more, which is nothing.
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It's always tempting if there's a super duper sale on the price of fuel in one
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station, but it doesn't happen very often, especially in Canada.
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So if you're looking for expert ID repairs in Vancouver,
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the guys to see are at Pawlik Automotive.
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You can reach them online at pawlikautomotive.com.
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You can book your appointment right there, or you can call them 604-327-7112.
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Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
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Thanks so much for watching and listening.
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Thanks for watching.
