Robert Bosch type VE Diesel

injection pump:
For many home mechanics the diesel injection pump is a bit of a mystery.
The Bentley and Haynes repair manuals doesn't describe its internals,
because it's not serviceable except by a few diesel specialists. Learning
some basics of how it works and what its internals are could be of interest
to the diesel owner, and the knowledge certainly can't hurt when
troubleshooting fuel injection problems, even if one isn't about to take the
pump apart.
The purpose of the fuel injection pump is to deliver an exact metered
amount of fuel, under high pressure, at the right time to the injector. The
injector, unlike in a gasoline engine, injects the fuel directly into the
cylinder or a prechamber connected to the cylinder.
The VE in the name of the Bosch pump used in the VW diesels and many
other small diesel engines stands for "Verteiler", which is German for
distributor or divider. The other common kind of injection pump is the
inline pump. The difference between them is that the "Verteiler" VE pump
has one fuel metering plunger, and a mechanism (the
"Verteiler"/distributor) to send the fuel to the right cylider. The inline pump
has one plunger for each cylinder.
The Bosch VE has comparatively few moving parts, but what does move
does so in a complex way. The figure to the left is from a Yanmar pump,
which works and looks the same as the Bosch . On the leftmost end in the
picture is the fuel feed pump. This is a vane pump, just like the vacuum
pump on the VW diesel engine. Its purpose is to suck fuel from the tank
and deliver it to the metering pump. All the things shown on the right in the
figure have to do with the metering, timing and distribution of fuel delivery.
The figure below shows this part in detail
The plunger (right middle in the figure) in the VE pump both rotates along
its axis and performs a reciprocating translation in and out. It is the
translation that performs the high pressure pumping, while the rotation is
responsible for metering and sending the fuel to the correct cylinder.
The cam disk is rigidly attached to the plunger. The drive shaft rotates the
cam disk. The cam disk rides on four rollers (only one shown in this
picture), and has four lobes. Thus for each revolution the plunger will pump
four times. Note that with this arrangement the plunger stroke is constant.
The metering (regulation of how much fuel is delivered) is done not by
changing the mechanical stroke, but by spilling some of the fuel through

spill ports, and thus changing the effective stroke . This is done by
uncovering a spill port under the control sleeve at a particular angle of
rotation. The other purpose of the rotation is to deliver the fuel to the
correct cylinder. This is done by having four four delivery valves (only one
shown in the figure), one for every 90 degrees of rotation. During a full
revolution the plunger makes four strokes, one at 0, 90, 180 and 270
degrees. During each stroke the delivery port in the middle of the plunger
is connected to a particular delivery valve.
To understand the function in some detail lets consider one stroke. During
the backward motion of the plunger, the rotation uncovers a fill port (to the
right in the figure, just below the magnet valve (solenoid)), and the plunger
barrel is loaded with fuel. At bottom dead center the fill port is closed. On
the forward pressure stroke fuel is pressurized (to over 120 bar). At this
time the Plunger barrel is connected to a particular delivery valve through
the channel in the center of the plunger, and a port in the side. When
pressure builds up to the delivery valve opening pressure, the valve will
open and deliver high pressure fuel to the injector.
When the desired amount of fuel has been injected the spill port opens
(located under the control sleeve in the figure), and the pressure quickly
drops. This causes the delivery valve to close. During the rest of the stroke
fuel is "spilled" through the spill port instead of being injected into the
cylinder.
The position of the control sleeve controls at what angle the spill port
opens, and thus determines the amount of fuel injected, in other words it
controls the metering. The control sleeve is moved in response to a
combination of accelerator position and engine speed. The latter is
determined by a mechanical governor.

Other functions:
Some other functions of the fuel injection pump are:
* Timing The timing is adjusted in response to engine RPM. At higher
RPM s, the fuel pressure from the vane transfer pump is higher. Pressure
changes effects a spring loaded plunger, and the resulting movement will
move the cam rollers to either advance or retard the timing. There is also a
cold start device which advances the idle timing manually.
* Governor A mechanical governor limits the maximum speed of the
engine to 4800 rpm in the bus/vanagon application and 5350 rpm in newer
passenger cars. It can be seen just above the cam disk in the middle figure.
* Stop A magnet valve or solenoid (shown in the figures) opens and
shuts off the fuel channel between the feed pump and the metering pump.
* Aneroid An air inlet pressure sensor is used to determine maximum

amount of fuel delivered on injection pumps for turbo engines. On newer

('89 and later) naturally aspirated engines a similar arrangement is used for
altitude compensation.