So here's the story (there's alway one, isnt' there?):

Sold my car (2000W 1.8T 20V SLXi) at the start of the year to a guy at work as I had got my company car in October and took this one off the road when the insurance ran out in November. He caught me at work today to tell me he broke down a couple of weeks ago and had to get towed home.

A local garage has "had a look" and determined that it's fairly major - "something like bent valves . . . maybe. We'll have to strip it down and have a look and that'll be expensive. May be easier to get another engine and swap it all."

It starts and runs, so it's not the cambelt, which I had changed by a main dealer at something like 58K (73K on it now; I do fairly high mileage so it's not like it was a long time ago either), together with the water pump.

I suspect it may be the coil pack, but can anyone describe the symptoms of coil pack failure and I'll see if it fits with the description I have of what it did and does now? Don't want to lead anyone on, see?

I also understand that this is a VAG 'warranty-not-quite-a-recall' replacement if it does fail; is that still true?

Thanks in advance.

With mine which just went, the symptoms were that the engine was basically running on three. Very rough running, ECL flashing/solid, lack of power (obviously a combination of 1 cylinder not firing correctly and safe mode which reduces power to protect the engine). A good way of checking whether or not it's a coil pack is to take the plastic cover off the battery and then remove the central plastic cover with 4 red wires protruding. If you remove each of these wires in turn, and the CP is the issue, the engine note should change on the ones operating correctly and stay the same on the ones which aren't (as they aren't doing anything anyway). I'm sure others will be able to give more info or perhaps give an offer of Vag-com'ing it which will give the definitive answer but that should at least be a start for you.

I think if the valves where bent it wouldn't run at all.

Coilpacks will give poor/lumpy idle and running. If it's multiple packs then it would struggle to start and shake like mad if it did as it misses. Good way to test is to unplug the connector on each injector in turn. if there is no change to engine tone when unplugging any of them then it is missing on that cylinder. Fault codes may be present so it's worth a scan.

As for the replacement coilpacks from VAG it was on a certain revision something like H or J and they where just changed out for free at service rather than a complete recall so some would have been missed due to using indy's or self service.

Ian

If you've bent more than 1 or 2 valves the engine almost certainly won't run, and if it does will misfire, and sound very tappetty at the same time. Coilpacks will also sound like a misfire. I'd start by getting the fault codes read, and see what they say. If that narrows it down to a cylinder, swap coilpacks with another one, and if the misfire moves replace the coilpack on the cylinder that the misfire moved to.

Thanks guys. Since I've not got the car any more and it's not local enough I can't describe exactly what it was doing. It was described to me as losing power to being really gutless and, although it will start, it shudders and shakes like a bag of spanners on a washing machine.

I had our Fabia in for its MoT and the guy there thought internal damage unlikely, suggesting first cambelt (no), then water pump (unlikely) and finally coil pack. My boss had a coil pack go on his TT and gave me a similar description of the issues without any prompts as to what the concerns were with the Octy.

I dropped a note to the new owner with a few links to threads I found on here with coil pack issues for him to compare the symptoms and my findings, together with a few dealer numbers to call for their opinion. Last I heard he had it booked into the local main Skoda dealer for a diagnostic check. I'll see what he comes back with.