UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

Bit o luck!

I drove the car around a bit at work and it was running fine, so i chanced it and drove it back to the garage this afternoon. Management light came on again and the misfire came back - caboom caboom and then the light goes off.... odd. About 10 miles later the same happens, with my car doing an impression of a rally car...

Car drives fine (in fact better than fine, possibly the best it's been since I got it) all the way to the garage, and i'm now getting worried that it won't replicate the fault. Lo and behold, pulled into the garage - running fine, drove down the car park, misfire comes back and the car starts coughing and spluttering !

They took it straight in, and 10 minutes later they came back out with the answer, with a printout from the diagnostic achine - misfire on cylinder 1 only, therefore it's not the timing again .

It was another HT lead, so they're just going to order me a new one... fitted tomorrow.

I'm just looking forward to driving the ho again !

Told you not to panic. Start from the bottom up with problems like that. I often jump to the doom. I swear I had water in the fuel once, and was panicing, couldn't start, ran like a bag o crap. Opened the bonnet spent ages looking around. But when a friend pulled the starter the cap that the leads plugged into was lit up like a large city at night. There was a crack and it was earthing to the block. Thus no spark in the firerry pits of the cyclinder!

-DR JWC

Nice! You can't beat a bit of improvised welding! I totally agree that I was being pesimistic, mind you I think it can be forgiven seeing as it was so similar to the original problem.. Don't think I could have afforded to have the cambelt done twice in the space of a week!

Got the new HT lead today and the car seems to be okay - big test is when I drive it to work tomorrow and give it a good long run...

well yes, I can believe it. Failure modes of many things are like that. Like a head gasket, its most likely to fail when it just been fitted, due to defects or fitting, and if it doesn't after a month, you are probably reasonably safe. And yes, cambelt, I think they are unlikely to fail, but they can have a defect from new causing them to jump. I have seen this from Audi!

Just take it easy, you don't have to be in a hurry all the time, it just costs you much more that's all.