Fuel pump rip off

Wondered if anyone could comment on the following

a good friend of mine has a Freelander TD4 51 plate and has been having starting problems. I advised her to take it to one of the several Landrover specialist near to us, she decided to take it to a garage she had used before who told her that they have all the diagnostics for Landrovers and could tell her exactly what the problem was. They had the car for three days and have billed her nearly £600.00 for the fix, their explanation being that the rear fuel pump had gone and that had caused the front fuel pump to take all the strain causing that one to fail as well , so two new pumps and its fixed.

I think that they have just replaced one pump and that did not do the job so they replaced the other as well for good measure, can anyone confirm that if the rear pump (under the wheel arch) failed then the front pump (inside the engine bay near the filter) would not be able to fuel the engine on its own. I cannot see that the secondary pump could pull fuel through a failed primary pump

thanks in advance

Tomjones2

If the vehicle has two pumps (pre 02) then the primary pump is in the tank and the secondary one in the engine compartment. Post 02 F/Ls have only one pump near the osr wheel.
I agree that a failed tank pump would cause the secondary pump to work harder since it would have to raise the fuel through the large suction pressure generated by the long feed lines, whereas normally it is supplied at a positive pressure.
The two pumps were used to overcome the problem of deisel thickening in cold weather. Nowadays the fuel formulaton has been modified to obviate that problem.

The secondary pump will have difficult fuelling the engine on its own and can result in MIL illumination and it's fairly common for it to fail soon after the primary pump.
Could have been done for less then £600 though so perhaps your friend should steer clear of that garage in future.

Hi this happened to mine.........replaced rear pump ....great.....then front pump failed....
this cost around £600.......early TD4's are very twitchy regarding pumps..........

I'd say £600 from a garage isn't too bad if both pumps were changed - main pump is £300ish, secondary pump is £150ish so around £150 for labour is probably less than 3 hours inc VAT...