Was contacted by VW today. Sadly, they agreed with the initial dealer decision. Zero warranty. Zero offer of partial help.
Went to 3 levels and it boiled down to their stating the APR fuel pump caused the accelerated wear of the follower.
End of story.
Case closed.
Oh, you have an APR HPFP... thought you were still stock...
I don't want to bring you down, but coming to my previous comment, it does seem like a damage induced by the HPFP piston somehow pressuring the sidewall of the follower rather than the typical accelerated cam follower wear.
I have an upgraded HPFP and checked my cam follower after 10K miles of use and it was still brand new... :iono:
That said, it's a shame that some VW dealers market themselves as tuner-friendly to attract customers, but when it doesn't suit their interest and shit happens they'll just deny your warranty... don't know if it was your case.
Let us know how the repair goes.
Same thing happened to me, but mine didn't explode, it wore straight through and camshaft destroyed APR pump... I'm at Stage 2+, and just like you said, the head of the service department was buddy buddy with me when I bought the car, but when this happened they turned their back and I too went all the way up the corporate ladder with VW, trying to show them that this is the same issue they had years ago with the FSI but they of course blamed it on the pump..
I'm now on my third follower... 16k miles after I spent $3,000.00 having the engine rebuilt from the first one failing I now check it every 10K miles and I just noticed it wearing again so changed it on my recent oil service.
Is anyone having this problem on a STOCK Golf R? not that there are that many of them out there...
ya its a 10 min job, I used rotella t6 oil and the wear was minimal. I recently switch to amsoil's high saps euro formula and the wear was even less then the rotella.