[EddyH]

I had a coilpack go me last night! When I checked under the bonnet I found the coil pack on cylinder no.2 had actually come apart with the coil unravelled on top of the engine!

Big thanks to Rich1068 for helping me out with a spare! []

 

[Foxy]

Woah.......not too tricky to diagnose then Ed?

My partner's TT 3.2 is suffering coil pack problems....it's less than 12m old.

 

[EddyH]

I've heard a similar incident led to a small fire in the engine bay!

 

[Del]

I thought all this coilpack business was finished, are these the latest versions breaking doown.

 

[EddyH]

I supposedly had all 4 changed a few months ago.

 

[Otto]

Its the time of year, the damper and colder weather. I am sure it was this time of year when it started the first time.

 

[tylerama]

I had the vw assistance out to look at my misfire last sunday and the dude said that it's only the later ones, supposedly reliable, "Fault sorted" ones, that give the problems.. the coils with the metal cage around them.

He'd never seen an earlier AGU engine with a faulty coil. He said they normally break out of the side of the plastic sheathing. Mine looked fine and said it might be down to the ignition amplifier.. the contacts were cleaned.. and has been fine ever since. But you lot probably know all this already ! []

So, it seems that it is more the later ones that suffer with problems.

 

[Carlos]

Last Saturday I had a problem when on the motorway, the car became short of power and when I pulled over to look under the bonnet the engine was moving a lot in the engine bay. I turned the car off for 5 mins and then started it up again, but the problem was still in existence. After a short drive down the road the car was back to normal and the problem hasn't been back since. Very odd as mine is an AGU.

Does that sound like a coilpack issue?

 

[Foxy]

I really feel for you guys.....it must be a nightmare.

 

[dazzer-b]

how can you tell if a coil is faulty because my agu is sometimes really poor in 4th or 5th when my foot has been off the accelerator and i slam it right down, i kangaroo along sometimes for about 5 secs then its fine. does this problem sound familiar, i have changed the plugs,

DV,

Turbo,

airfilter,

MAF,

any ideas please help.

 

[Stevie P]

You might be able to use VAG-COM to detect whether a coil's on its way out before it actually goes completely. It's not 100% accurate by any means, but it's the only way I know of.

If at least one of the coils is working OK, then each cylinder with a faulty coil will have its ignition timing retarded under load due to the ECU treating the misfire as a knock. So, one or more cylinders will show conspicuously high values compared to the others when logging the appropriate measuring groups with VAG-COM. If you swap coils between cylinders, and the values change, then you know that the coil pack is dodgy. Well, that seemed to work for me, anyway.

 

[tylerama]

Quote: posted by Carlos on 02/11/2004 18:25:20

Last Saturday I had a problem when on the motorway, the car became short of power and when I pulled over to look under the bonnet the engine was moving a lot in the engine bay. I turned the car off for 5 mins and then started it up again, but the problem was still in existence. After a short drive down the road the car was back to normal and the problem hasn't been back since. Very odd as mine is an AGU.

Does that sound like a coilpack issue?

When mine has been playing up Carlos, it has been very obviously short of power.. almost undriveable. Like it's firing on only three cylinders, which I guess, it is ! It may be the same problem as the engine runs VERY roughly when mine does it and you can feel it shaking through the car.. it does sound a little like it, imo. Was it undriveably bad or just a slight loss of power ?

 

[Malky]

Old coilpaks don't have the amp stage intermediate amp stage module built into them! This is what makes the new ones so unreliabile... It's all in the heat dissapation, or lack of!!

I replaced all my AGU ones recently, which made absolutely no difference whatsoever!!

 

[Stewart]

I replaced all my AGU ones recently, which made absolutely no difference whatsoever!!

Me too!

 

[mex_nick]

this all sounds slightly similar to a problem i had with my AGU recently. it had an intermitant problem of running very rough, as if only on 3 cyclinders, and would then come back again...went through 3 mechanics and lots of head scratching and suggestions of faulty MAF's and coil packs, when it eventually turned out to be the control unit that sends ignition to the coil packs...not sure of it's tech name but it's a very small component that attaches to the air filter box and costs a bomb!

 

[Malky]

Yep you mean this...

It's the intermediate driver stage for the coilpacks sits on the airbox!!

I got mine for just over ?100, not fitted it yet.... but soon...

 

[mex_nick]

thats the baby...i obviously got ripped as i paid ?186 for mine...won't be going back to that mechanic again!

 

[Malky]

Nah I got mine from the states!! ?186 is a good price!!

 

[evilhomer]

So lets get this straight, are we saying that this id the definite problem, or and is causing the damage to the coilpacks?[?]

 

[D4RK1]

Another thing to have a look at is the loom that runs to the coilpacks, check the earth cable sheathing is not split as this will also cause a missfire.

Carlos, your problem sounds very much like a coilpack to me, when i had one go that was the exact syptoms my car had.

I think the latest version of coilpack is Type L now. You can check by unplugging them and checking the number thats written across them, the last letter represents the 'type' of coilpack you have.