Technical Changing the ignition coil

[Resin42]

First off you'll have to excuse the fact that my I.Q. drops dramatically the instant I pop the bonnet on a car.

A bit of background first. I have a 1998 2 litre petrol Marea, and the other day it wouldn't start. The guy from Green Flag told me the coil was away, from a couple of previous worrying moments when it seemed unwilling to start plus the frost that hit us on the day it happened this all seemed to make sense. I was told it was a job I could do myself easily enough once I have the part which I now have, (£30 with a staff discount, friend of a friend type thing. Winner!).

My initial problem was trying to locate something the resembled the part I now have but I've managed to narrow that down with the help of the component diagram on here (mega helpful btw, thanks). Now I have a slightly different problem in that I can now see there are five of them. They seem to be located where Greenflagguy was initially checking and not the black box to the right of that where he said the coil was located.

How can I find out which one of these is causing the problem or do I need to replace all five? Is it possible there is something feeding all of these which I should actually be replacing? Should I never again trust a breakdown rescue driver?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

David

 

[Resin42]

A quick update.

On closer inspection the coil I have doesn't fit, good job I didn't take it out of the plastic. Any advice you can give before I re-order would be a major help.

Thanks again.

 

[MikeG20]

My 1.8 Marea have separate coils for each cilinder and few weeks ago one coil died-but i could star engine, it worked on 3 cilinders. First check fuel pump and relay, then plugs on coils when ignition on-terminals 2 and 3 should have 12v signal, then check primary resistance for every coil-on terminals 1 and 3 should be approx. 0,4 ohms and secondary resistance should be approx 8500 ohm

 

[jug]

on the 2.0 model there is a seperate coil on top of each spark plug. if one failed then it would still start, but it would be running on 4 cylinders rather than 5 so it wouldn't run very well.

a non-starting problem is often the crankshaft position sensor, if you have no spark on all plugs then this is the most likely culprit, or if the key code light is remaining illuminated then its the immob.

if you have sparks then you need to check the fueling, but lets cross that bridge when we come to it, check for sparks first.

 

[bulldog5046]

the marea will run on 2 cylinders! sounds a bit rough but still runs lol