AnakChan

Hi all,

My C4Cab started sputtering yesterday and the engine light came on. I took it to my local garage and they determined it to be the ignition coils & spark plugs. My car is a '01 (of which I owned it only since '04) and it's clocked just over 73,000 km.

I've opted to go for Design911uk's Ace branded ignition coils & Beru spark plugs.

The questions I have are :-

1) how long before ignition coils & spark plugs give in? Is 73K km a decent life out of it?
2) Any opinions of the Ace branded ignition coils?
3) I just ordered the two aforementioned items. Do I need anything else? O-rings, etc?

TIA

Barn996

Porsche suggests plug changes at 30k miles, don't think they have a coli pack recommendation. My C2 1999 has the o rings and tubes, not sure if your '01 does or not.

DBJoe996

73,000 miles on plugs...time to change them. The coil packs last as long as they last. I have a 99 C2 with 130,000+ miles on original coil packs. I change the plugs and coil pack o-rings at 30,000 mile intervals. Mostly coil packs die from heat cracking. It is possible you only need to replace one. A quick OBDII diagnostic should at least give an error code for which specific bank and cylinder. Autozone will do that for free.

AnakChan

Cheers for the responses. Just to clarify it was 73,000km. But seems that's more than the 30,000 miles (48,000 km) so it looks like I've gotten a good life out of them.

I think the garage I went to didn't have a PST2 & checked manually. They're recommending changing all ignition coils & spark plugs so I've ordered from design911uk.

As the garage didn't mention about the o-rings I didn't order those.

ChicagoSpeed996

newbie question, why would spark plugs only last 30,000 miles? When other cars spark plugs last 100k plus miles???

pontifex4

It's a function of the ground electrode material. Some materials last longer (though give a somewhat weaker spark), like the 100k mile or 'lifetime' plugs you mention. Performance cars tend to have plugs whose ground electrode(s) degrade more quickly.

To the OP, I changed my plugs at 96k kilometers and two of the six coil packs were cracked then. Changing them made a noticeable improvement in smoothness, though I wasn't getting any error codes.

996 mark 1 cars (up to 2001) have plastic tubes that keep oil in the valve train where it belongs, and off the spark plugs. When they fail, you'll usually see oil seeping down from the spark plug holes on the valve cover. Changing the tubes and their o-rings is quite easy while you're doing spark plugs on the early cars.

bal

I changed mine at around 82k miles. Here's a new vs. old comparison




In case a legend is needed, left is new, right is old.

One of my coils was cracked and this manifested itself through a CEL on that particular cylinder when the car had just been washed. Once the plugs and cracked coil were replaced, the car ran more smoothly.

AnakChan

Hi all, thx to all the advice. I've changed the spark plugs & ignition coils & it's running ridiculously smoothly. Much smoother than even before the engine light came on & before the engine started sputtering.

It makes me wonder that by the time I had the engine error light on how many of my sparkplugs were misfiring & if I was having problems before but not take notice of it. I.e. If only owe sparkplug was misfiring, would it sputter badly & would the engine error light come on?

03996

Any reason to buy Porsche genuine parts for this work? If not, which other manufacturer do you guys prefer/recommend?

alpine003

Beru(Porsche coil supplier) for coils

NGK(Preferred) but Bosch will work too for spark plugs

If mk1 car then Porsche OEM Spark plug tubes along with OEM O-Rings while you're at it

03996

Ah, thanks.......dealer is offering the coils for about $70 each. Looking around, seems like a good price.

My car is a 2003 so it's probably NOT a Mk1?

alpine003

That's a good price from the dealer. Yours is mk2

AnakChan

When my dodgy Porsche orig parts were pulled out for replacement, it seems the sparkplugs and ignition coils were Beru anyway. So it seems there's nothing special about original Porsche parts. What's scary is that the price was almost 3x more. I paid something like $230 for all my parts from Design911 (ex delivery), and the local workshop would have charged me $700 for parts but original Porsche components.

kgoertz

One of my coal packs failed at about 90,000km. When I replaced them the others were also heavily cracked. This is for a summer only DD. I replaced them with Bosch plugs and coils from ECS Tuning since they sell them as a kit.

Hurdigurdiman

I thought my car was running really good until I decided to change ONLY plugs and sleeves & o rings as part of my 60000 mile DIY service on my 99 job. The difference in 'pick up' response afterwards was unbelievable. The same coils are on the car from new. I checked them out and they all looked good with no cracks. Even the plugs didn't look that worn but as I say the difference in performance was chalk and cheese. When I need 6 ignition coils for mine I will get them here for about $30 EACH. http://www.buyautoparts.com/buynow/1...SiaRoC_93w_wcB