bblac

Driving home today and the car just starts to shake and vibrate. Vibration went away if I drove under 20mph so I coasted a few miles back to my house. Got the car to the dealer and was told the ignition coil was bad and that somehow the car was running on three cylinders which was causing the vibration? Could someone explain to me in dummy terms exactly what just happened to my car as that is all greek to me. I've searched the board here and didnt see a good dummy explanation but I did notice that this seems to be a common problem so I'm a bit worried as the car only has 24,000 miles. Hopefully not a sign of bad things to come.

On the bright side of being an Audi owner. Called roadside assistance. Within 20 minutes they were at my house. Had my car taken to the dealer. (30 miles away) Dealer had the car back to me by end of day. So from the time the item happened to having the car back was less than 5 hours. I think that is pretty impressive customer service. Good customer service sure seems to help in these situations and bad customer service can sour you forever when this happens.

Badger278

An ignition coil provides the power needed to make the spark plugs spark. They can go bad, crack, overheat. It's not a sign of any other problem.

irenesbob

The ignition coil steps the voltage up from the battery's 12 volts to a much higher voltage at the spark plugs for optimum ignition. In the old days the cars had one coil serving all 4, 6 or 8 sparkplugs through the distributor. I believe the A4 has an individual coil for each cylinder/spark plug. Probably only one of your 4 coils went bad, so the other cylinders could keep firing away.

Tgr_Clw

Ha. I love cp failure stories. Fun.

Youreviltwin

"Who is yur daddy, and what does he do"

GodBlessQuattro

hahaha! i love arny

Youreviltwin

yes!