This story is a year old, but better late than never. I just returned to this board for the past week to diagnose and fix some PS fan and low speed fan resistor stuff.

I was a couple hundred miles away from home camping in the Blue Ridge Mts when I fired up my car to drive out to the meadow for mobile cell reception. My '05 R53 was running really rough, as if it was misfiring. Luckily there was another vehicle there that I was able to take to the Advanced Auto Parts & Walmart in a town about 45 minutes away. I bought some tools (forgot mine at home) and headed back up the mountain to do some troubleshooting. I discovered that I was not firing on (I think) cylinder #4. Back down the mountain to buy some plugs and try to find some wires. After installing new plugs the problem persisted. I swapped some cables to verify all the cables were good. The only thing left was the coil pack. The next morning when Advanced opened, I bought a new coil pack and installed it. The car fired right up on call cylinders.

The Screamin Demon lasted me from late '05 to '12. I feel like a coil pack should have more life than that.

 

Interesting- I've had mine since 06 but my car only has 22K miles on it. Was there any corrosion around the terminals?

 

Two of them look pretty messed up.
http://imgur.com/a/RP4ID

 

It lasted 7 years? So how many miles were on it? And do you drive it in the winter to get that corrosion?

 

Yeah, maybe it served its lifetime. I'm just guessing the stock coil pack would have lasted longer and is of higher quality. Perhaps my expectations were off, not the longevity.

Yes, driven year-round.

 

I have a MSD, but have heard a lot of people say both MSD and screamin demon are a waste of money and that the OEM is just fine even on the track.

 

I have the screamin deamon coil and wires and if you really want to know they do nuthin for performance so Im going back to stock equipment. Put your money in better place for upgrades. Oh yeah dont waste your money on aftermarket CAIs either JCW's seem to be the best.

 

I second (third?) this. I had no noticeable performance increase. However, since I was autoxing the car, it was one of the very free few modifications I could do and stay in G-Stock.

 

am i missing something? what available money will you have from going to a stock coil?

the screaming demon seems to be $30 less than the oem unit (am I not looking in the right places)?

7 years driven year around seems like it served well...?

i would think the stock coil would of corroded well before 7 years (if your not cleaning and using dialectic grease like 90% of people)

 

The money saving is implying you stick with a stock coil and not opt for the aftermarket one.

I did some searching and didn't find too many instances of the stock coil pack failing, so I wouldn't have expected the SD coil pack to fail. I certainly used dielectric grease, but rarely if ever removed and cleaned it.

 

My car is 8 years old and still running on oem coil pack, no corrosion. I've bought the car in 09 and the previous owner was using it during winter.