Repeated Coil Pack Failure... Please Help..
 

Hi guys,

Was just cruising in 4th yesterday and the car started missing, i pulled over immediately shut it down and looked for anything visibly wrong in the engine bay... Disconnected the battery and drained all the residual power from the system, started the car up and away it went again no problems... 5 mins later just around the corner from my worshop same thing again... Repeated my previous steps but to no avail...

Tried clearing ecu codes and still nothing... Tracked it down to the front coil pack on the passenger bank (not sure on VQ if thats No.1 or No.2, im in aus so Left hand side). Swapped the coil pack with one on the other bank and the problem went with it so i new it was the coil pack. Checked error codes and got "3510" from the CEL but cant seem to find a listing for it.

Got a new one from nissan this morning, all went well till i got round the corner from my house (about a 20min drive) gave it a short stab in first and bam same coil pack on the passenger bank dead again.

Codes flashing up are 3510 - cant find a listing for it
1130 - Swirl Control Valve Control Solenoid Valve ( not sure what that is but im sure its not ignition related..)
1103 - Map Sensor Heater (also not ignition related..)

I get a bad feeling that for some reason the ecu may not be driving the coils properly... Or perhaps the coils have a bad earth somewhere... Any suggestions as to my next course of action Nissan Australia are fu(ken wankers and wont give me the time of day because its an import..

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers

John

arent you under warranty?

are you running an emanage??

Its an '03 that was imported by an importer, no real warranty given. No just standard computer, with headers full twin exhaust, pop charger and UR crank pulley.

maybe a bad harness or the ecu is not working correctly

The O2 sensor is read for each cylinder to guess at a misfire, changing exhaust prior to sensor will upset the misfire diagnosis software.

A defective dirty sparkplug can cause a coil to fail fast. Coil could be one of the thousands bad from factory.

Use a digital oscilloscope to measure the coil dwell [charge time] and compare to others.

http://www.lindertech.com/ign_coil.htm

Even more detailed waveforms and tests:
http://www.autonerdz.com/downloads/copman.pdf

Cool thanks, do you think it is possible that the plug fouled slightly the first time killing the second coil. I dont have an oscilloscope available to me local. I checked the trigger wire out of the ecu today and it was fine along with the earth and constant power.. Ive order 2 more coil packs so i get an extra go at the problem... If it happens again it really cant be anything other then the computer...

Forgot to add, ive also got a new set of plugs to go in with the new coil pack. I may also add another earth to the loom just to be on the safe side. It seems the previous owner had the engine out of the car when it was resprayed and alot of things were left loose or off...