I would change coils when doing plugs unless you know how old they are as they are relatively cheap and good piece of mind.

 

honestly, steve if the provenance/history of the car is unknown to you? then anything that get replaced as a maintenance item should be replaced as i suggested earlier upthread. that gives you a baseline so in a cpl months you are no longer guessing as to what might NEED changing vs what you KNOW to be "new". that's just the wisest course, in my view.

but definitely plugs and coils at the same time. unless, like me, you know your coils are under 10k miles? and you just like to have fresh hot spark. plugs degrade very quickly on these cars. if tuned? even more so.

since the shop is going inside the car? get plugs and coils, and familiarize yourself with the 30 VS 90k service items on the car. do a search and you'll see the service intervals. then you'll know exactly what gets changed and when. i change stuff far more often than the "book" suggests and at 118,000+, that policy serves me well.

good luck with it.

 

Well worst case scenario is the coils and plugs have 11,000 miles since that is all the car has but again the age is the problem-almost 14 years. I will just have them replace them all.

 

you cannot go wrong with that approach.

 

I bought my car with 38k 03. Car was ok untill i started to beat on it. Ce light was blinking stayed on for few min and went away. And car had missfire at high rpms. Right away i knew probably original coils. Turbo cars eat coils and spark plugs also do to age. They had hair line cracks. Never replaced. I went with stock coils and ngk sparkbplugs. After that ive!noticed clutch was slipping. You can save a ton if you do simple maintanace yourself. See when was last time brake fluid was replaced. You need to do it every 2 years. If you dont track the car

 

OK. Coils all replaced and same with all new plugs. Every coil had hair line cracks and apparently never been replaced as the tech said the intercoolers still had the tabs on them from new and every bolt was untouched.
But as I leave with new coils and plugs and just barely get on the car the same thing happens; check engine light and service workbook light. I didn't feel any hesitation or issue yet they still lit up. I was hoping to do an ECU tune and exhaust on this but need it running solid first. Any idea where to look now? Could the lights just be in the system from before and need to be cleared out?

 

I think you are going to need a durametric...

 

^^ the plugs and coils were a no brainer and were needed obviously. the next diagnosis may not be. but as c32 has suggested. you at this point need a full diagnostic readout. they would've ( any "decent" shop ) cleared the codes, as well as mentioned to you any they found that they didn't believe would be resolved by coils/plugs. clearly, something else is amiss. no choice but to get it "read". agreed.

sucks. sorry to hear.

 

I would guess MAF but who knows lol.

 

First you need to read the codes. You can post them for comment.

The CEL could be stale, that is from the misfires that prompted you to replace plugs and coils. I would have thought the shop would have read then cleared the codes for you, but in the shop's defense the CEL could be new and not something left over.

Since plugs/coils were replaced there are several possible explanations. With no codes to go on all I can offer is there is a problem with one of the new coils, or plugs, or one of the coils is not securely connected to its plug or to the wiring harness, or there is an intake air leak (or boost leak) brought about by the tech failing to get all the hoses back on and leak free. My tech sources tell me a common problem with the Turbo is a hose is slipped on but a piece of rubber gets pulled back and even though the hose is tight and feels secure this piece of rubber can be a leak.

Generally the last thing touched is the first thing suspected, but without the error codes though all is guessing.

Read the codes.