This might prove to be helpful to someone out there.

Last Wednesday at highway speed my '07 R56 S (96k miles) began a regular miss without any warning and the CEL light started flashing. I got off the highway and the car sounded and felt like it was running on three cylinders, so I did what I've been doing since I was a kid to diagnose a misfire -- with the engine running I pulled each coil (it was a plug wire years ago, of course) one at a time and listened for the arcing of the spark from the coil to the plug. It happens that I pulled number four first and got no arcing. All the other cylinders were fine so I swapped coils three and four and found out that the miss followed the coil, and the trouble code changed from 3004 to 3003. (I keep a BT1 code reader plugged into the OBDII socket so I can just pick up my phone and see what's going on immediately.) I drove home and called all the chain stores which actually list the coils, surprisingly, though none were in stock. I went to the dealer, which I had just passed on my commute, and picked up a coil for $66 bucks, installed it in the parking lot, and drove home good as new.

Mark

 

Lol I learned that same method (with the wires of course) when I was a kid. Lol

Glad you were able to diagnose and fix it quickly!!!

 

If you hadn't done what you did it could have been costly in the hands of the dealer! Sometimes people even techs miss the little stuff!

Great job!

 

Of course if you pull the wire too far from the plug and the spark has nowhere to go it'll course through your body. I got a jolt or two that way, but no harm done.

Mark

 

Thanks. I haven 't paid a penny to the dealer for labor and I don't intend to.

Mark

 

No jolts for me..........yet