im new here and to any sort of forum in general so bear with me if im breaking the rules....

i have a 2001 A4 1.8t quattro. about a month ago i was driving and it started to shudder the check engine light was flashing so we stopped, checked the manuel and my boyfriend told me it was the catalytic converter and to keep driving till we got home. less than 5 min later i smelt something burning so i pulled over popped the hood, he got out to look and told me to get out, it was on fire.

we cant figure out whats wrong, my boyfriend and all of his friends drive nissan 240sx's and stuff like that. so most of them dont know whats wrong or care.

please someone help, because im so lost. i miss driving my car =[

 

Well the CEL is flashing due to the missfire. The bigger question is WHAT exactly caught on fire. Was the coolant gone? Its possible that the coolant flange broke and you lost all your coolant. Need more info.

 

i dont know much about cars..enough to kinda get by so i have to go on what my genius boyfriend and his friends say.

apparently the cat got so hot that the heat shield was what was actually burning

 

That happened to me once on the way back from Albany in my B5.5 Passat.

One of the coil pack decided to fail then ignite. Lucky for me there was a VW dealership just down the road. 28bucks later and I was back on the road to Virginia.

Make sure you have some long needle nose pliers if it is the coil pack that failed, because when you pull it out the boot may separate from the coil body....very long coil in there. you will need the pliers to extract the boot so you can install the new pack.

Hope your fire was as easy to fix as mine!!!

Good Luck

 

"Check engine was on and boyfriend told it was a catalytic converter"

Unless ur bf is a walking code reader and has a OBD II interface, there's no way he would know that. Engine light can be many things. And if it wasn't the check engine light that went on, there's no light in the dashboard for "bad catalytic converter".

Burning smell and if you felt it in the cabin, my guess is burned oil. When you have bad oils seals, oil drips and can hit the exhaust pipe which causes it to vaporize and thus the smell. As it hits the headers there's the chance of fire occurring. The probability is low, but it does happen.

+1 on the check engine due to misfire

+1 on the "need more info" part

 

I had the same indication on my 99 A6 Avant. CEL and engine shudder. I replaced the coil pack, problem went away. Easy fix, costly part....

 

"Burning smell and if you felt it in the cabin, my guess is burned oil. When you have bad oils seals, oil drips and can hit the exhaust pipe which causes it to vaporize and thus the smell. As it hits the headers there's the chance of fire occurring."

i would say your probally right except im thinking there was to much flames..unless thats what cause the heat sheild to catch fire.

im thinking that it is the coil packs but now i just need to know if the cat is bad or not.

 

lol, your cat is fine. A bad cat (full cat) can't catch the car on fire and nor can it cause a cel unless it is so bad then you would have an o2 sensor code. If the cel is flashing then you have a bad coil pack somewhere most likely. You need to get the obdII scanned (free at any auto store) and findout where the fire was. Without doing these two things your not going to get anything solved. If you have an oil leak you would know it before it got so bad to catch fire. I'm guessing you have an electrical problem that caused both your fire and flashing cel. Maybe post some pics of the location of the fire? GL though, and don't listen to your bf

 

chances are its a misfire, and the cat got hot because unburned fuel was just cooking inside the cat, best to take it to a real mechanic or if you want have your BF swap the coil packs and see which cylinder the misfire moves too. after that just replace teh coilpack.

 

if it was just the cat your engine would sound fine but your car would be REALLY slow and you would have a hard time making it up hills and such, it happened to me, it would not make the engine stutter

+1 on the coil pack.

am i the only one who has the special coil pack that bolt down and cost and extra 20 bucks. i was expecting to go into autozone and pay around $30. Nope. That'll be $56 dollars sir.