[s-cars] 1.8t coil conversion saga

[hoog23 at aol.com]

Didn't someone find that the newer revisions of the coils are better (less prone to cooking)?
 
Dave
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: vfugman at globaldialog.com
To: s-car-list at audifans.com
Sent: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 1:53 AM
Subject: [s-cars] 1.8t coil conversion saga


With an OEM coil on the way out (failing gradually over a period of months),
I finally took the plunge a couple months ago and ordered the 1.8t coil
conversion harness and a set of 5 coils from 034 Motorsport for $355.  They
shipped the kit the same day, and the workmanship on the wiring harness is
beautiful-no way I could do this good of work myself (not the mention the
time to source parts and put it all together.  But I digress.)

 

Installation was a piece of cake.  Took much longer to rewire connector #2
from the ECU back to the factory configuration-I had had it wired to use the
spare POS channel.

 

Car seemed to run smoothly with the new coils in place, with the possible
exception of an oh-so-very-slight loss of power at full boost.  But with
some of you 400+hp guys running the 1.8t coils I figured there couldn't be a
problem running the 1.8t coils on my 280hp TAP Stage I setup.

 

3 weeks later, drove 400 miles to St. Louis for Thanksgiving.  Car runs
great.  Start the car on Thanksgiving Day, car runs rough.  Coil in cylinder
#4 had died.  Swapped coil with #3 to make sure.  All VW dealer parts
departments closed for 4 day weekend, so I had to spend a couple days longer
in St. Louis than planned.*  Guess I should have gotten that spare coil to
have in the trunk!  Picked up a new coil at VW dealer for $30 Monday
morning, nibbled the ridge off with a pair of wire cutters I had in the
trunk, and hit the road.

 

Another 3 weeks later, coil in #2 cylinder died.  Just picked up another VW
coil tonight ($42 at local dealer, what's with that?) which I'll drop in
tomorrow.

 

When my first failure occurred at Thanksgiving, I checked the 034 website
only to find that they are no longer supplying coils due to quality
problems.  With my first coil failure in 3 weeks I'll second that!

 

However, even more recently they have added a statement saying that the 1.8t
coil conversion may not be compatible with certain chipsets that have a
longer dwell duration than the factory tuning.  Evidently, the longer dwell
overheats the coils and causes premature failure.

 

So, I'm trying to figure out in my case whether the problem in my case is
the excessive dwell or just a bad batch of coils.  Previous owner of my car
fitted it with a TAP Stage I chip claiming 280hp.  The TAP chip has been
much maligned, and I'll grant you the boost is very digital in nature, but
when it is on the boost is strong-can't imagine getting more out of a stage
1 upgrade.  The chip has been in the car for almost 10 years and 150k miles.


 

Of course, I have no idea what kind of dwell the TAP chip is running.  It
could be that the OEM coils handled the extra dwell with no problem (1
failure in 11 years sounds pretty typical), but these wimpy little 1.8t
coils can't take it.

 

At any rate, I've got to figure out what to do now:

 

a.  Just keep replacing coils one-by-one as they fail
b.  Replace the remaining 034-sourced coils with VW-dealer-sourced coils
and see what happens.  If dealer coils fail, the problem is probably
excessive dwell.  If dealer coils are reliable, then problem is bad coils
from 034.
c.  Revert to stock setup (replacing failed OEM coil.)

 

If the problem is excessive dwell, then it seems like my options are either
go back to OEM coils or go to remote-mount high-power coils.  Frankly, I
liked the stock setup except for the failure-prone POS modules.  OK, I don't
like that the hardwired coils that can't easily be swapped from one cylinder
to another.  But I did like having my "20V turbo" cover in place!

 

Varon

'95 urS6

*In my case, staying in St. Louis a couple extra days wasn't a problem. got
to spend more time with friends & family, and it's good to miss a day of
work & school now and then!  I did locate a Passat 1.8t coil at a FLAPS on
Friday.  It had the same 4-pin connector, but had a huge square flange on
top-no way it would have fit as-is.  If it had been urgent to get home, I
could have modified the Passat coil to work at least temporarily-either saw
off the square flange or use a length of spark plug wire to make the
connection to the plug.

 

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