Hopefully someone will be able to shed some light on this issue! I bought my Panda 100hp earlier this year and have been pleased with it so far apart from having to change a few things on it already. The dealer I bought it from serviced it for me but after a few months I noticed a bit of a tappety sound from the engine. Thought i'd check the plugs to see if the garage had bothered changing them. When I pulled ignition coil #2 out, the plastic cover crumbled away in my hand! There was also a lot of discolouration to the inside of the shaft, inbetween the black outer covering. It looked brown and bubbly, a bit like rust. All others were fine.

I took this as just a bad coil which needed replacing, so bought a new one and some new plugs for good measure. The tappety noise was still sort of there but not as bad. I figured this was just the noise of the engine as i've heard Puntos sound like it.

Recently some 3 or 4 months later it's got a bit worse so I changed the oil for fully synthetic 5w40 but still no change. I've just gone to check the coils and plugs again and low and behold, the one I replaced has discoloured the same as the old one in cyl #2. Also inside and around the top of the plug hole is very brown and dirty where as all the others are nice and clean. There's no difference in performance and isn't particularly louder when hot or cold but it does make a strange rattle at around 2k rpm and slightly judders but nothing major. #2 spark plug is also fine. It looks as if that cylinder is getting hot perhaps but i'm not sure. I also noticed that taking the plugs out was quite easy, they weren't that tight but when I put them in I made sure they were tightened correctly.

I hope someone can help!

Thanks in advance


John

The noise isn't normal IMO. I'd investigate that before worrying about the coil pack personally as its probably resulting in increased wear of something within the engine.