This has been the most frustrating problem so far with my car. Let me start with what a misfire is for those who don't know... I misfire is caused by an interruption of the air-to-fuel ratio inside the combustion chamber in the cylinder. The most common causes of this occurrence is a faulty coil packs and or spark plugs.
Symptoms of a misfire are:
-engine light flashing
-engine light on
-rough idling
-rough acceleration (feels like the engines going to come out of the hood)
-decreased in performance
This began one day when I was merging onto the highway. As I applied more load than usual to get up to speed, my started shaking and felt like there was a loss of power. As this was happening, my engine light began to flash. Than the flash stopped and the light remained on. Immediately after letting off the gas, the car ran normally. Being an individual who maintains there car to the "t," I immediately brought my car to an authorized VW/AUDI mechanic to get a diagnostic scan. Code had came back as P0302.
This meant that I was having a cylinder 2 misfire. I decided to change all my spark plugs and coils all at once so it wouldn't cause me problems in the future. It's common when one spark that when 1 spark plug or coil goes, the rest will follow shortly. After getting them changed, the cylinder 2 misfire was still present. When I brought my car back the second time to diagnose what was wrong, they were not too sure, and assumed it was a carbon build up issue common in direct inject engines. The mechanic put some BG 44k cleaner into my fuel tank in hopes it would help a bit with the issue. They said that if it persists in the next week, they'll have to do a carbon clean up of the valves.
Yup, you guessed it if you know quite a big about cars. The injector cleaner didn't do anything and I did end up bringing the car back to the garage but this time to another authorized VW/AUDI mechanic to get the carbon cleaned from my valves. I soon found out again that this was not the issue! I'm currently digging deeper in determining what is the issue... To those who are having similar issues and don't have want to sell your left kidney to maintain your cars, I feel ya... I dug deeper with countless of hours of research and here is what I have came up with that could possibly be causing this mysterious misfire beyond the coils and plugs...
Please understand that I am not a mechanic and that everything I have written is based on my personal knowledge as a car enthusiast. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
This has been the most frustrating problem so far with my car. Let me start with what a misfire is for those who don't know... I misfire is caused by an interruption of the air-to-fuel ratio inside the combustion chamber in the cylinder. The most common causes of this occurrence is a faulty coil packs and or spark plugs.
Symptoms of a misfire are: -engine light flashing -engine light on -rough idling -rough acceleration (feels like the engines going to come out of the hood) -decreased in performance
This began one day when I was merging onto the highway. As I applied more load than usual to get up to speed, my started shaking and felt like there was a loss of power. As this was happening, my engine light began to flash. Than the flash stopped and the light remained on. Immediately after letting off the gas, the car ran normally. Being an individual who maintains there car to the "t," I immediately brought my car to an authorized VW/AUDI mechanic to get a diagnostic scan. Code had came back as P0302.
This meant that I was having a cylinder 2 misfire. I decided to change all my spark plugs and coils all at once so it wouldn't cause me problems in the future. It's common when one spark that when 1 spark plug or coil goes, the rest will follow shortly. After getting them changed, the cylinder 2 misfire was still present. When I brought my car back the second time to diagnose what was wrong, they were not too sure, and assumed it was a carbon build up issue common in direct inject engines. The mechanic put some BG 44k cleaner into my fuel tank in hopes it would help a bit with the issue. They said that if it persists in the next week, they'll have to do a carbon clean up of the valves.
Yup, you guessed it if you know quite a big about cars. The injector cleaner didn't do anything and I did end up bringing the car back to the garage but this time to another authorized VW/AUDI mechanic to get the carbon cleaned from my valves. I soon found out again that this was not the issue! I'm currently digging deeper in determining what is the issue... To those who are having similar issues and don't have want to sell your left kidney to maintain your cars, I feel ya... I dug deeper with countless of hours of research and here is what I have came up with that could possibly be causing this mysterious misfire beyond the coils and plugs...
Possible causes:
- Fuel Pressure Pump - Fuel Injector - O2 sensor - MAF sensor - VAC Leak - Fuel filter
Please understand that I am not a mechanic and that everything I have written is based on my personal knowledge as a car enthusiast. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.
- Shuai W., Thunder Bay, ON, Canada