About a week ago my car started sputtering pretty bad between 2-3K RPM with a little more than normal acceleration. I knew I had a bad cat, and a buddy of mine immediately said bad cat (without prior knowledge of my cat). Sounded reasonable, until I talked to a different guy who actually scanned it for me. This is what I got (besides the bad cat):
P0301, misfire detected cyl 1, 2239 RPM at 39 MPH. Anyone know the most likely cause, or where I should start looking to fix this. My car is running like total *** right now. Please, any suggestions would be great!

 

replace all 4 of your coilpacks with oem packs from audi and it will be fine again

 

maf sensor?? my old nissan did the same thing

 

no sorry that's wrong the 1.8t has bad coil design and he said only the 1st cylinder is misfiring it the coil packs and when one goes bad they all go bad within soon and audi isnt a rice (nissan)

 

Survey says replace the coil packs... i'll give it a try as soon as I get a little expendable cash and see what happens... anyone else have any idea besides this one?

Thanks for the help...

 

no thats the only real thing that will make the 1.8t do that coil packs are $25 a peice these were the cheapest oem one's i could find for u http://www.ecstuning.com/Audi-B5_A4-...nition/ES2050/

 

Awesome... I was trying to find some prices, and the cheapest I could find were at least 60 each... But the description says year 2000 up, mine's a 99.5. Is that an issue? You are a life saver though, thanks a million!

 

Hold up a minute. First swap the packs around and see if the misfire follows. If it does then yeah the pack is the problem. Coil packs absolutely are NOT the only thing that can cause this although it's not a rare occurrence. A bad plug can cause the misfire too. So can a bad wire. So can a failing ICM (although that often causes more than one misfiring cylinder).

It's likely that it's a coil pack but it's not a guarantee. Try some basic troubleshooting rather than just throw money at the car. You'll learn about it, gain some familiarity with the engine bay, and possibly keep you from wasting unnecessary time and money. And honestly, get new plugs. They're cheap, they're a wear item, you probably don't know how long they've been in there, and if they're getting crapped up you'll gain back some efficiency. Gap them to .032" and put them in.

 

i would call them and ask them theres all kinds of coil packs you can buy from them

http://www.ecstuning.com/Audi-B5_A4-...gine/Ignition/

 

Yeah, I was going to swap the pack to a different cylinder this weekend to check it, wait for the CEL to pop again, then recheck. As far as the plugs, they're about 4-5 months old, I replaced them soon after I bought the car. I checked them once the sputter started just to be sure, but they looked pretty good.
I was looking around that website, and I noticed something about "E" series and "R" series coil packs. They both cost about the same, so what's the difference?
Again, guys, thanks for all your help...!