A3 1.5 Tfsi Misfire problem

[Jakeeh123]

Hi,
I recent bought my first Audi, an A3 saloon with the 1.5 tfsi engine.
The car was only 8 months old and had done 5300 miles when i bought it.
After only two months i have had the same fault twice. The will drive fine then all of a sudden seem like it is about to cut out and pop up on the dash with Start Stop systems: Drive Fault. At this point the engine runs extremely rough and will not drive.
The first time i called out roadside assistance who found the faults p201 and p204 (Cylinders 1 and 4 misfiring). He then cleared the engine management light and checked it. It ran fine and i managed to get it over to audi, who after a few days of "Diagnostics" said there was nothing wrong with it. It ran fine since then till yesterday when it happened in the middle of a roundabout. I have sent it back into Audi now and I'm waiting on diagnostics. Has anyone else seen this fault or experienced it?
Thanks

 

[MuPPeT_ON_TouR]

Misfires are normally caused but coil packs or sparkplugs.

You can move coil packs around and attempt to move the fault just incase they find nothing wrong again.

Move packs 1 and 4 to position 2 and 3. If it goes again and the new faults are for 2 and 3 you know it's the packs.

Good luck.

 

[Jakeeh123]

Thanks. I'm hoping they find something this time, but i'm not hopeful. Going to request to see what they have actually checked this time before accepting the car back. Really appreciate your help

 

[MuPPeT_ON_TouR]

If they find no fault again insist they at least move plugs and packs.

If the fault moves then it's diagnosed. If it remains 1 and 4 then you eliminate plugs and packs as the fault.

Doing nothing again won't help.

I think on from there it's injectors and such, starts to get messy.

 

[Jakeeh123]

Yeah that is the plan. I'll certainly be putting my foot down this time considering I only purchased it in September. Thanks again for your help, my luck with cars has transferred to this one

 

[AlS3BE]

Seem to be quite a few misfire type posts on here.
It might be worth keeping a note of these and see if it’s the same problem across the range.
Might be a bad batch of plugs, coils, even ecus.

 

[Khufu]

Seem to be quite a few misfire type posts on here.
It might be worth keeping a note of these and see if it’s the same problem across the range.
Might be a bad batch of plugs, coils, even ecus.

yip, VAG have never had any issues with coilpacks

 

[AlS3BE]

yip, VAG have never had any issues with coilpacks

MAF as well

 

[Retroman]

In my experience generally with cars, coil packs are often number one suspect when a car develops these random misfires. There isn't really a sensor which reports a specific coil problem to the ECU and so it just picks up a generic "misfire". They break down with heat and vibration because of their position and a fault can come and go with heat coming and going in the engine bay. As said above, faulty batches are not unknown.

I would guess that the "apprentice" in the workshop just plugged the car into his laptop and saw no recorded fault code and so concluded there was not fault

 

[Jakeeh123]

So I've just got the car back today. They found that injectors 2 and 3 were faulty. These have now been replaced with new seal kits. Hopefully this is a permanent fix and will last. Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[Retroman]

Good news that you got it sorted. Ironic how ECU stored misfires on cylinders 1 and 4 translate to faulty injectors on cylinders 2 and 3

 

[Jakeeh123]

Good news that you got it sorted. Ironic how ECU stored misfires on cylinders 1 and 4 translate to faulty injectors on cylinders 2 and 3

Yeah I found that odd. Still can't get my head round that one, but I'm pretty sure they did all four injectors anyway. So fingers crossed it'll be good now! Just glad to have it back