Cant idle on start and now only firing on 3 cylinders. HELP!

[mattPH2]

Ive just bought myself a 1.4 16v Dynamique and im having some problems!

Basically 2/3 days ago i started the car up in the morning and it revved upto about 2000rpm then the revs dropped right down and the car stopped. The only way i can get the car started now is to keep my foot on the accelerator at about 2000rpm and then drop it down slowly to about 1000rpm then finally take my foot off the accelerator and let it idle itself... seems as though it needs warming up before it'll control the idle speed by itself.

Tonight i was driving home, i stopped at a junction then pulled off again, the engine warning light flashed on 2 or 3 times and the car juddered in time with this, it then went off... after this the car only seemed to be firing on 3 cylinders.

Ive been reading quite a bit about coil packs and HT leads but i dont really know where to start...

Thanks, Matt

 

[Beef-Mc]

Well your car has individual pencil coils. These commonly fail. Best way to check if there working is to disconnect each one in turn, if the engine sounds worse then it's not that pencil, if you take one out and the engine noise doesn't change thats your dead one.

 

[mattPH2]

It was the 4th coil that was duff... £40 from the stealers. I changed the spark plugs in the process aswell...cheers for the help Beef!

 

[mattPH2]

Has anyone got any ideas about the crap idle on start up? is it just down to the cold weather?

 

[Beef-Mc]

No worries, glad to help. I think most 1.4/1.6 owners have one spare just in case lol. As for poor idle, seems to be common this type of engine as well.

 

[mattPH2]

Ive just done a quick search through and the throttle body and ICV seem to pop up quite a bit... Are they pretty easy to clean out? Do you have to take it off to clean it or can you do it on the car?

 

[MicKPM]

Yes, they're easy enough to clean but they do have to come off the car and use something like a spray brake cleaner to de-gunk it. Pretty simple job and there's two long bolts holding the resonator box to the TB and a further 2 10mm bolts holding the TB to the block. Remove these and the TB will slide away from the back of the inlet manifold.