My coils failed finally after 6 years!
 

To make it easier on me and save some typing read skoobz post its nearly exactly the same including the smoke rising up when i looked under the hood.

Mine started while taking my son to school a week ago yesterday and of course it first happened while making a turn. When you're half way thru a turn and your car stops going it can be a bit unnerving.

We made it to school and then nearly home when the car stalled. there was lots of missing and bucking and power loss and anotehr stall at the house.


I don't have scanalyser at the moment because of issues with an old computer and having purchased a new computer. So i got the car over to the dealer and had them check the codes. I knew what it was of course but i wanted to get the codes run to make sure.

Called Paul and Sheldon at MazMart for the parts since they are at least a third less than i can get around here. Plugs coils and wires.

Here are pics of the plugs all fouled up

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_ZPRXRA38aG8/Sy...2/IMG_0704.JPG

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_ZPRXRA38aG8/Sy...0/IMG_0705.JPG

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_ZPRXRA38aG8/Sy.../IMG_07042.jpg

guess which ones were in the spots with bad coils? or at least the ones the misses started in? you can still smell the unburnt fuel on them.

i was going to take pictures of the coils but it will just be the same posts back and forth about what you can and cant tell from looking at them. they all have very noticeable white spots but one which is there but not as remarkable as teh others.

The smoke i saw definitely came from them arcing and burning off the oil/grease from where they sit.

I had the dealer do the carbon cleaning since i was there. My wife didnt want me doing it at the house and really i didnt want to smoke out my neighbors.

no signs of the cat failing yet but i made sure to talk about the possibility because of the misfires and cleaning with the dealer techs/management and they understood in fact the service manager for once was on top of things and had already made the tech look for cat codes and had checked the warranty. i didnt have to tell them etc.

car runs like new again. you can clearly hear the difference in the motor from before coil failure to now and of course with good spark and de-carbonized its got more spring in its step

6 years, wow!
C'mon Charlie, get out there and drive that car more often.

;)

Think a lot of the CAT failures maybe that people either constantly flood their car or when they do have a misfire(plug or coil) problem......they keep driving for awhile and don't get it taken care of right away. In either case, that leads to a lot of unburnt stuff in the kitty. That's only my opinion of course.
I'm not saying you Charlie...............I'm talking about people that will be driving for upwards of a month on bad plugs/coils with a CEL and car running like crap. Or those that have flooded numerous times for whatever reason.

yes right but you had to be in the car. there was clearly a bunch of fuel getting through to the cat. i even had a look under at the house to check on it. doing the cleaning on top of that sends so much other gunk to the cat.

a failure after an episode like i had compounded by the cleaning is a definite possibility. it won't always throw a cat efficiency code so its hard to tell without looking but if it had while all of that was going on then a new cat would be in order. Ill be keeping an eye on it for sure.

6 years wow, how many miles?

only 50k. i have driven it very much in the last year.

added an enlarged pic of the leading plugs. I should take another look at the wires to see if there is any evidence that can be photographed

Mazurfer: I agree with you on bad coils probably being the culprit in a lot of CAT's going bad. I don't think it's a coincidence that my last cat went shortly after I had my trailing coils not firing properly.


Charlie: Glad the dealership took good car of you (probably because they're afraid of you ;) ) though I think it would have been fun to do the carbon cleaning at your house!
I did the decarb procedure a year and a half ago and was surprised that there wasn't MORE smoke. (I used mazda cleaner not seafoam if that makes a difference)
Definitely keep an eye on your cat and hopefully it's okay.
Oh, and get that computer fixed so you can run your scanalyser again. Do you have the old serial port version or the new USB?

old serial port :( ill be upgrading to sCanalyser Pro Tuner :bigok: :us4allswi

Charlie, is this the first issue you have had with your 8, those plugs are disgusting ;)
6 years ....

yup this is the very first thin i've had go wrong with the car.

and i agree those plugs ARE disgusting!

So, the "6 years" part of the thread title is irrelevant since you only drove the car 50k miles.

sure :) but if i said so in the first post then no one else would be able to point it out and then what kind of thread would that be? :D:

Charlie....those plugs were dead 20K miles ago ;)

It will run like a dream with new coils., plugs and wires :)

so THAT'S what plugs look like after 50,000 miles! :uhh:

no the plugs were changed once bfore @ 30k. so they only have 20k on them. the blacker stuff on there is from the misfiring and i think the clump on the bar is too. if i cleaned them off they'd probably be okay awhile longer.

Yeah, those are some nasty plugs ya got there!

"if i cleaned them off they'd probably be okay awhile longer." :eek:

I don't think you're really serious about that statement, and you probably might get away with it, but pleased that you spent some of that old money! :wavey:

Hey Charlie - I have some extra leading plugs brand new if you need to save some money.

You ought of seen my plugs after pulling them...I think for the first time in 79k miles! (o_O)

I cant even put into detail how horrible they were. Those plugs look amazing apposed to the ones I pulled.

^^ neglecting one's car should be a crime.

i would do a usb serial port adapter before i did the pro tuner.. pm me if you want some insight on that comment..

and as a note. i took my coils off at 76k miles.. changed them, but it was a fuel pump issue.. the coils were fine..

odd how coils are good and bad.

beers :beer:

Way to go Charlie !
I gave up on the stock set up. I got missfire and replaced my oem coils wires and plugs only to get missfire again. So I replaced the coils wires and plugs again :(
Gave up the second time and went aftermarket. Guess you can say I have 2 sets for back up if the aftermarket fails but its been a few years now.
Keep in eye on them oem suckers.
GL!

Actually... not to spin too finer a point here but these plugs ARE Iridium IX and the standard lifetime rating for these plugs is 60K klms or about 37K miles..... NGK used to state this clearly on their site but now they've gone all coy and won't mention exact figures.

In normal piston engines I've run Iridium IXs for 80,000klms with no issues but since our engines are so 'dirty' by nature a change point of 20-40K klms (or every second year) is probably the best.

Out of interest - what RON fuel are you using?

I must be nutz to change my coils every 15-20 K miles then ...

nycgps: I used to do the same thing.
New plugs and coils once a year for the first 4 years I owned my car.

With my BHR System, I doubt I'll need new coils any time soon. :cool:

I do mine every 35K just get keep the kick ass feeling going. You know like when you change your oil after 3 months :yumyum: