I had a coil go a few days ago. This coil happened to be on number 3 cylinder.

I replaced this coil with a champion but as I'd been swapping the coils around to detect the dodgy one the new one went on number 1 cylinder.

Are you still with me?

So I had another old Sagem coil on number 3 cylinder. The car was running fine for a few miles and the Engine Warning Light even cleared itself. But just before I got home The engine warning light started to flash rapidly and it was continuously beeping and throwing up "Engine Failure"

Lo and behold the coil on number 3 cylinder has gone again. Could this be coincidence, as both the duff coils are old Sagems, or could there be an underlying cause as to why they both packed up whilst on this particular cylinder?

Forgot to mention - when this coil packed up, I could see spark flashes in the spark plug well, but when i swapped it to another cylinder there were no flashes at all.

HMMMMMMM

It's very likely to be the old coil now on No 3 has also reached the end of its life, there's only so long it can resist 20,000 volts of energy and after the few millionth time it's had enough

BUT,as it's the same cylinder, it could also be a poor contact of the low voltage connector to the coil causing problems

Many a coil is condemned when really it was just a bad contact here.

"I took the old coil out and put a new coil in and it works so it must have been the coil right?" Not really, it was just a bad contact that you made good in moving everything

NB A bad contact here is also a major coil killer as it has all that energy inside the coil and nowhere to go

So pull off the low voltage contact and clean it out, this is where the old contact cleaner comes in handy again, make sure it's making good contact on the coil and try it again. If it's still duff then it's a HT side fault which is coil or plug. To see which, swap the suspect coil over with one seen working and see if the fault follows it

It looks like it was indeed another coil problem. Fitted ANOTHER new one today and it seems to be running ok. I haven't done many miles with it yet though.
However, the engine warning light hasn't gone off this time which is a surprise as the battery was disconnected for over 4 hours.

Don't really care though as long as my baby is working again.

It should go off after a few starts once it realises everything's ok again.

Deckchair5 said:

It should go off after a few starts once it realises everything's ok again.

Click to expand...

Yep. You're right once again Decks:worship:

The warning light has gone off and everything seems fine. Better than fine to be honest. I also gave the idle control valve a good clean - wasn't much dirt on it but i just thought i'd do whilst i had the cover off. Car seems more responsive and generally sharper now :slayer:

Thanks for the advice (again) mate. Very muchly appreciated.

You're welcome.
It does feel slightly off when a coil is breaking down but it disguises it well.. ...until you put the new coil in, then, like you've found, that old zip is back again