Last night my car fell flat on it's face and I felt like an idiot leaving a light as the car stuttered and bucked thru the intersection. I took it easy the next mile home thinking I had a boost leak. All hoses are new and clamped down so no issue there.

Turns out that I was having a misfire in cylinder 1 but no blinking CEL yet. I took her for a short run around the block and sure enough there was that lovely amber light blinking. I cleared the code (P0301) this morning and swapped coil packs 1 and 2. Took her for a HARD run and nothing...car ran great! I am about to order a new set of coil packs and plugs just to have on hand. This has never happened before (and I am expecting it to happen to cyclinder 2 soon). I did not test the ICM because obviously the packs are getting voltage. Maybe something was just loose and needed to be reset, I doubt it tho.

I know the VAG cars are plauged with this problem. Do these things go out gradualy or do they just go? I do have the Hatachi packs in there now, I heard that these were less prone to failure but still fail. For others that experienced this issue did your packs die gradually or just go?

 

Did you clean the packs when you swapped cyl? What you should do is check the gaps of the plugs first to see if they have grown and replace if needed. I wouldnt go off spending money on coilpacks with no proof its them yet.

Packs tend to just die.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. The packs themselves looked very clean upon inspection. That is what I would rather hear, that they tend to just die than be an intermittent problem. I will be pulling the plugs today or tomorrow after picking up a new torque wrench....was using it as a breaker bar and busted the rivet (Doh!). Yes you do make a good point about not picking up new packs just yet. I need to do a little more investigating.What I was scared of wasthat it would be a random.....sometimes they work sometimes they don't issue. This is a daily driver for me so I can't have a lot of downtime that's why I was thinking of grabbing them to have readily on hand. I am off until Wednesday so I can devote some time to it.