Ignition coil HITACHI or OEM Volkswagen

as the op stated, the car sounded completrely different. there was no hesitation, idle changes, vac changes. the car also accelerated a lot smoother as well. it was easier to start from a stop and the engine felt stronger. i didnt believe this at first myself so i threw them on my buddies heavily modded a4 that had an ignition problem between 4-5k rpm and the sound went away with these coils. his car also performed much better as well.

my tach was acting up when i first got the car, I cleaned all the connections going to the coil when i replaced the coil and that fixed it.

Changed the plugs, and while changing them noticed that there was a little charring in two of the coil paks seating surface where the spark plug tip sits...after changing the plugs the car still felt like ****. Ran to Advanced....and they showed 2 cylinders not firing good, needless to say they only stocked one coil pak. I replaced it and the car ran like a champ.

The old AWD hitachi coils are far more reliable in my experience. I would not change to the awp style from the bolt downs. I have had ~8 failed AWP coils over the years on my 2001 audi/2002 gti and I have 8 hitachis now in my 2 1.8t's for a few years now and no hitachi failures. This is with track days on the gti. They also bolt down so you won't have them popping up on you whack a mole style like the awp ones sometimes do

Don't replace ignition coils until one or more gives out, then I would look into replacing them all with Hitachi E ignition coils (bolt-downs).

To make a story short, and have a happy ending like me , just buy the 1.8 T coilpack (coil-on-plug x 4) manufactured by Hitachi (Japan). They have the top of the plug filled with some ceramic epoxy-like stuff that seems really sturdy and heatproof. I bought them at ECSTuning.com over a year ago, and they haven't failed not even once.

best ignition coils ever. i've been through two other OEM revisions before finally getting the Hitachi bolt-downs from ECS.. and i've been misfire free for about 6 months now!

My wife's 2000 Cabrio started having this same set of symptoms. Replaced coil, plugs, plug wires, cap and rotor not that long ago. Coil was indeed cracked, but the symptoms persist.

Everyone swears the stock coils are great for 800hp because force fed did it. I don't care, the coils suck and always have. I always had random misfires here of there even when new, and I could never run the plug gap I run now with push downs or bolt downs on a stock car even without serious hesitation and enough to increment the misfire counter. This 190k mile Jetta did this also and I thought maybe carbon fouled plugs or a dying coil. Now it pulls 20 inches of vacuum with a rock solid needle at idle no bouncing, no hesitation. The car sounds absolutely different at idle, fresh plugs and a .040 gap, no other change but the coils and fersh plugs. It sounds throatier and crisper with the larger gap too.

Yep, guess it's common, but mine just caused a smoking fire under the hood! As mentioned, I just started the car in the a.m. and was backing out of the garage. It started sounding and acting funny as explained and the engine light was blinking.