[s-cars] Sucks to be me (Ignition Woes/thanks to S-car list) - longish

[David Kase]

So...I got the AAN powered e//S2 up and running again on all 5.

Last week I mysteriously dropped two cylinders after I had changed the 
aux rad on the car.  I found it after I had just finished buttoning up 
the car after the rad change and went to pull it outside.  I looked 
around and found nothing obvious and as it was 11PM, I threw in the 
towel for the night. 

The next morning I visited Audifans and, within minutes, found my exact 
problem (no spark in all conditions).  The problem described a bad POS 
and a nifty fix for it.  I went home with a happy face and started the 
repair.  I quickly found that the repair had already been done ( the 
repair can only been done once).  Crap.

So...I thought I needed a new POS.  I called Chris at F5 and he 
overnited one to me.  Since it was after hours it was going to actually 
be two days. So, I went to the local Audi garage and got two new POS's 
to try.  I popped them in and...the same miss!  Dammit!

Hmmm, must be a bad coil.  Up until this point I thought I had only one 
dead cylinder.  I pulled the injector plugs one at a time and found two 
bad cylinders.  Shit, two bad coils at $125 each...

Well, I could return the POS's to the local garage and save the $250 for 
the coils and buy the 1.8T kit for $355.  I contacted 034 and none could 
be had for at least two weeks.  I was then directed (by the list) to 
check with Apikol.  Brendan went to work and whipped one up for me in 
one day and overnited it to me (Brendan rocks!).

I received the Apokol kit (absolutely beautiful kit, very professional 
and stock looking) and popped it on in minutes flat.  Now, here is where 
I find the /real/ problem.

I unplugged the old harness without paying much attention. When I went 
to plug the new one it I see there are four (?) plugs.  Up until this 
point I only thought there were the two going to the POS's.  Clearly an 
AAN newbie mistake. 

Well, when I went to plug in the "other" two plugs I found the harness 
in the car had the plugs, but the plugs had no /housings/!  Now 
wait...how can the plug stay, well, /plugged/ if there is no housing 
with a retaining clip?  The answer is, it can but not for long.  One of 
the damn plugs came apart (as there was nothing but contact friction to 
hold it together) and /that /was my problem all along!   UGH!!!!!!!!!!

I did not do the conversion myself so I did have someone to blame.  What 
lame brain would actually leave those plugs like that!!!  Son of a b*tch!!!

So, I cut good connectors off my old (but good) coils packs and soldered 
them in place.  Car runs like a champ but my bank account is a good 
$700+ smaller.

Thanks to all that helped.  The UrS car guys tolerated my (AAN)  newbie 
status and lack of searching the archives.  They helped tremendously.  
Special thanks to Eric, Chris, Brendan, and anyone else I may have 
forgotten.

Now to fix the DP gasket that blew out when I hooked the POS's up 
backwards and it backfired...

Dave K.
in Audi hell (hit the S2 bumper pulling out of a parking lot yesterday, 
today I see that it popped out one of the S2 bumper grills (gone)- 
somebody shoot me)