Fuel filter replacement on 2010 Eos Komfort means car is now disabled?

Has anyone else experienced this? Pretty ridiculous for such a simple filter change to cause a total debilitation of the car.

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You disabled your car! Unfortunately you and many others don't read workshop procedures before carrying out workshop work. You fall into the trap as a DIYer of doing what you have always done on older cars and then get it wrong. V.W regard replacing parts like this as 'Workshop service operations' and they assume you have the same knowledge, experience, and tools to carry out the work:

Modern efficient EFI engines pass very small amounts of fuel through their fuel injectors. V.W High pressure fuel injection pumps are of two distinct types: Mechanical driven from the camshaft and electrical using the battery. When you replace a fuel filter even assuming you filled the filter can with fuel? There will be a lot of trapped air, particularly if fuel has run back from fuel lines. You can imagine getting that air through timed fuel injectors the size of pin holes using engine cranking is virtually impossible.

You need to know and follow the safe procedure used on your engine for bleeding the fuel system. It's not a common 'one fits all' procedure. I can use my own method without diagnostics which is not now regarded as safe workshop practice, but search Google. V.W will advise the safest method for their shops to use.

When an engine is fitted with an electric HP fuel pump, a diagnostics fuel system purge is an automatic procedure that opens all the fuel injectors and runs the fuel pump for about 30 seconds. Ultra safe with no high pressure fuel squirting about and starting fires! This is usually long enough for air to be forced out, but may need to be repeated if cranking doesn't start the car.

Hmm... makes sense. That's good intel. Today being Monday I got in touch with the local VW mechanic (non-dealer, but trained by VW) who suggested he's never had a problem using the key to clear the lines, i.e. just running the starter several times. He said it sounded like maybe I don't have a fitting on all the way. I'm pretty sure all three of those fuel filter fittings clicked on nice and snug, but I will double check. The other thing is, the car actually RAN right after I replaced the filter... I forgot to mention that. I swapped the filter, turned the key, started instantly, and I verified no leaks at the filter fittings. It was the next time that I went to start it that I got nothing... I'm guessing the air finally reached the engine at that point, and the initial running of the engine was just using the last few drops in the fuel rail or something.

I'm also going to check the fuses related to fuel delivery.

I'll follow up with what I find out. Car has been sitting the driveway all weekend. If all this fails, probably loading it onto a tow truck and off to the shop.

This is so frustrating. There are numerous videos of ppl just quickly replacing the fuel filter on their 2.0 VW engine, with a 6.6 bar Mann filter, and no one mentions the line bleeding issue, either in the videos or the comments. Combine that with a VW mechanic telling me you should just be able to use the key to bleed it makes me think something else is messed up here. It certainly seems like everyone else on earth with a gasoline engine has had no issues whatsoever with an airlocked fuel system. Once in a great while, in some dark corners of VW forums, I can find a post of someone who appears to be in a similar situation, but there's no resolution about how the problem was fixed.

I checked the clips and the fuses, I reinstalled the old filter, reinstalled the new filter, everything looks fine, no leaks, etc. I checked voltage in the line going to the fuel pump.

I don't see any coherent method of manually bleeding the VW gasoline system on the internet, yet.

Looks like I am going to have to wait 1.5 wks for an appointment at the shop, I will post back with any solutions that came up from them, or if I happen to figure out anything in the meantime but I think I have just about given up. This all seems bizarre.

Solved. I can understand why the person from 14 years ago didn't post a resolution as well.
Fuel and return line were switched. It was that simple. There is nothing tremendously complicated about fuel getting to the engine... there is a low pressure pump in the tank that sends fuel to the engine bay through a filter. There's a high pressure pump in the engine bay that then sends the fuel to the injectors.

Unfortunately, the send and return lines from the low pressure pump have exactly the same fittings. So it is possible to switch them accidentally. In which case no fuel will make it past the filter.

This means that, yes, in fact, as with the many many posts online, with a gasoline engine, the car is very much capable of clearing out any air in the lines. The low pressure fuel pump will fill a new (empty) fuel filter with just a few turns of the key.

This is a (normally) simple job. Three fuel lines on the filter, one screw on the filter bracket... that's it. No manual needed, no special priming procedure needed. Fortunately for me, no VW techs needed either.