Is your car coughing, sputtering, and reacting sluggishly as though it’s caught a dose of the common cold? If it is, you might have a faulty ignition coil on your hands. When you notice any of the following signs of a bad coil, head to your local VW dealer where technicians can clean or replace the malfunctioning ignition coil and nurse your car back to health in no time.
Does Your Volkswagen Have a Faulty Ignition Coil?
Sluggish Acceleration
The combustion process inside each of your engine’s cylinders relies on the ignition coil to supply consistent electrical charges to the spark plug. If a coil has become damaged by age, overheating, vibrations, bad wiring, or something else, it will no longer be providing this steady flow of power.
As a result, the spark plug stops firing properly and at least one cylinder stops powering your car as it should. You’ll soon notice a loss of accelerative power, your engine will feel sluggish, and your gas mileage will also drop.
Misfiring Cylinders
When a spark plug fails to spark consistently because of a bad coil, it begins to misfire. This disrupts the combustion process, causing your engine to cough, sputter, and judder, especially when you first start the engine or rest your car in idle.
Hard Starts and Stalling
If more than one ignition coil is having trouble or one cylinder has stopped working altogether, you might find it hard to start the engine in the morning. You might also find yourself stalling at inopportune moments, such as when navigating heavy traffic or pausing at traffic lights.
Smoke and Backfiring
When misfiring cylinders aren’t promptly resolved, they can soon lead to more serious problems. With misfiring, even though the spark plug is no longer sparking properly, fuel is still being injected into the combustion chambers at the same rate. But this fuel is no longer burning away properly. The resulting excess of unburned fuel starts coating the spark plug and ignition coil in a sooty carbon residue.
The excess fuel may also start to ignite outside of the cylinder’s usual rhythm: it sometimes explodes just as the cylinder is opening, which you’ll hear as loud backfiring. The excess fuel can even start leaking back through the exhaust system, where it might ignite, creating louder backfiring and black smoke to emerge from your car’s tailpipe.
Your VW Dealer Can Clean or Replace a Bad Coil
When your local technician inspects a faulty coil, they’ll decide either to clean or replace it with a new one. If the coil is only fouled by carbon residue but still passes various spark and power tests, it might be recoverable through cleaning. This can often be achieved with a good electronic cleaner product, a little WD-40, and a copper brush.
Have your bad ignition coil examined and cleaned or replaced today at Crain Volkswagen of Fayetteville. We’re the region’s go-to dealership for VW vehicles and maintenance servicing.
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