'06 polo suddenly began to stutter under acceleration, CEL blinking

[jkmelbs]

Hey all,

driving home yesterday, turning left "with care" at a steepish set of lights, downshift and put the foot down because why not and immediately feel as if i've put it into 5th instead of 3rd. The whole car's stuttering and shaking. Check the gear, it's right, the RPMs are high 3.5-4k o it should be fine but it's still shaking just at a higher frequency. The CEL started to blink within a minute

Tried again this morning and it was idling roughly when cold (ok when warmed up). Took it for a 10 min drive to try to flush anything out but it made no difference. It feels like it's two gears too high and it doesnt go away at higher revs, just becomes less annoying. I definitely feel a loss of power.

I put it in neutral when going about 80ks downhill once it was warmed up and revved the engine, sounded fine didn't feel the stutter so it was only happening when under load/clutch engaged. It was still stuttering if i put it in 5th and let it coast downhill


'06 Polo gti manual
about 150K on the clock


anyone had a similar experience?

[Grant]

Sounds like coil packs

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[sambb]

yep coil. If it was sunder load then most likely. If you can accelerate very progressively to a decent speed and still get to full throttle or near and it doesnt do it (less load) or does it less then that would confirm coils. Its still worth casting your eye over the boosted intake pipes and check that nothings come partially off. If you look down the back left corner of the engine, vertically down where the master cyl is you might see or be able to get your arm in there to see if one of those hose has partially come off. Or use a mirror - that's where they go on stock cars.
Do you know someone with vcds. If so you need to look at block 014 and 015 I think and see which cylinder is failing and go and buy a coil and drop it into that cylinder. If you have zero vcds access then go and drop the money on a coil at VW and then try it in 1 cylinder at a time until it runs well and that was your bad one.

[jkmelbs]

thanks guys
i'll get the codes read on the way home

i saw the other thread on the coil pack recall for 05-07 cars
i called up southernvw but the only recall they could see on my car was the airbag wiring loom
does anyone have any recall ref # or something i could point them at?

[seangti]

Mate, coil packs fail, not anything to be concerned about re a recall. Some guys carry a spare pack in the glove box for this very reason. I've been fortunate to not have experienced it, but still have a set of packs at home (not much use if i'm out hey...).

Easy job to fix, just gotta find which one.

If you can scan the car, you'll be better positioned to know if boost/vacuum related or coil pack, etc. But by your description it doesn't sound like a big "problem", just an inconvenience.

[jkmelbs]

so the codes are
p0300 combustion failure detected
p0304 combustion failure cylinder 4 detected

i'll grab a few coils off the web.. spoke to vw again and turns out the recall ended in feb this year - i guess they figured if it lasted 12-14 years it probably wasn't one of the defective coils haha

[simon k]

you reminded me about a recall on mine - I was in at the VW dealer a month or so ago getting gaskets and the bloke looked up my VIN - he found that there's a recall outstanding on the airbag wiring loom... I booked it in for Tuesday

[sambb]

that's bizarre. I remember Greg (Kaanage) brought that up a while back. I called VW and they said my car wasn't in the recall. Its an 08'. Any chance you could ask them if that's a recent recall or one from years ago.

[jkmelbs]

Mine's part of the airbag recall too.

when i called up about the ignition coils & they checked my vin they said that i had the wiring loom airback recall on my car and booked it in.

i didn't think mine had any issues because i've checked it on the online vin recall lookup & it came up as a blank..

[jkmelbs]

thanks everyone, the 4 coils i ordered arrived yesterday & it was all good after putting them in - vw sure make it hard to change something as simple as a spark plug by putting a bunch of crap over the top of the engine

[sambb]

yep its a nest up there until you throw it all in the bin. It may be worth testing the ones you do have one at a time in your engine till you find the bad one. Nothing wrong with keeping 3 spares!

[h100vw]

Plugs arent replaced all that often per VW schedule. So the extra time once every 3 or 4 services isnt a big deal.