[Ber Tony GT]

Would appreciate your advice on this guys..

Basically, i would like to tuck my GT out of harms way in my garage and keep its mileage down as its currently on the works commute every day.

So i found this very tidy Seat Leon 1.4 petrol, 68000 miles, FSH, 2003 vintage at a used car specialist, took it for an 8 mile test drive, went over it with a fine toothcomb and could only find a slightly worn drivers seat base and worn rear tyre so agreed a deal and picked the car up yesterday.

Anyway, purchased said car and about 12 miles up the road at about 65mph there was a slight misfire and the engine warning light started flashing, only to go out again shortly after. I stop for a rest break and a few miles later it starts misfiring again and the warning light reappears, i then nip over to my local garage who hooks it up to his diagnostics and finds misfire on cylinder 3 and coil pack issue so clears the fault codes and tells me to return if the warning light comes back : says it could be the EGR valve.

I suppose you can guess what happens, about 3 hours later its back on , intermittently misfiring then revving cleanly, and currently the yellow light is staying on.

I decide to contact the used car garage and to his credit, he doesn't immediately tell me to foxtrot oscar, but to get the fault investigated and if not too expensive then he will foot the bill, but if its going to run to several hundred then he will see about a refund.

The issue is, i really like the car, its great on fuel, will be perfect for the work commute, but will it need endless parts thrown at it to fix the fault, so i'm undecided, do i cut and run or try and persevere with it in the hope it can be swiftly cured ?

I suppose the next step is to take it back to my local garage for further investigation.

Your thoughts please guys
Regards, Tony

 

[Pud237]

Does the history give anything away? When were spark plugs last changed?

Could be something really simply like a coil pack, you'll be able to pick one up at a scrapyard no bother. Have a quick look in the engine bay, any loose/perished hoses. Did the garage record what the fault codes were before clearing them? They should narrow down possible causes.

 

[Ber Tony GT]

As it happens, spark plugs were changed last August.
I also checked the DVLA mot history, all the mileages tally, doing about 5000 a year, only failed in January on rear suspension bushes, most previous years its passed without advisories and last owner kept it for 8 years which is usually a good sign.

One suggestion was to run some injector cleaner through it, and running a JTS Alfa theres plenty of that in the store cupboard !

 

[keithyboy]

I'd give him a chance to fix it. It's a car, they break.

 

[zulu ferret]

What Keefy' said, : :thumbs:

 

[Poolegan]

Was this why the previous owner off-loaded it? As Pud says check the codes and make a decision from there.

 

[symon]

VAG cars of that era are notorious for having failed coil packs.

I would put my money on that being the cause. The dealer should fix it...


I had a coil pack fail on my V5 Golf. The car lost a cylinder and then sounded like a Subaru. :lol:

It just went suddenly, no occasional missfires or anything it just suddenly dropped onto 4 rather than 5.

Are the coil packs easy to access? If the one from cylinder 3 is swapped for one of the others the misfire should move to the other cylinder if the pack is at fault.

 

[Ber Tony GT]

VAG cars of that era are notorious for having failed coil packs.

I would put my money on that being the cause. The dealer should fix it...


I had a coil pack fail on my V5 Golf. The car lost a cylinder and then sounded like a Subaru. :lol:

It just went suddenly, no occasional missfires or anything it just suddenly dropped onto 4 rather than 5.

Are the coil packs easy to access? If the one from cylinder 3 is swapped for one of the others the misfire should move to the other cylinder if the pack is at fault.

Thanks for that info Symon

Well i've driven the car several miles today and while the engine warning light remains on, it hasn't misfired once.

Its also been treated to a dose of injector cleaner, can't possibly harm it so currently just monitoring things.
Returning back to my local garage in next couple of days, will report back then, cheers

 

[Pud237]

Unless its something major, it should be an easy fix for a local garage. Its a pretty bog standard engine, shouldn't be hard to get to the bottom of it pretty quickly and put it right.

 

[Ber Tony GT]

Right, quick update

Thought i would leave it a few days to monitor its running and since Monday i've done 130 miles and the car has run fine with no warning light staying on , so being cautiously optimistic but looks like its cured itself, hurrah !!

Putting some thought in, maybe being sat around for at least a month on a garage forecourt didn't do it any favours, engine bay looks very clean so maybe the steam clean caused some issue with the electrics ??
at least it looks like i can get on with enjoying it now,

Cheers guys