Here's the situation: I'm driving home from work in the pouring rain, traffic is moving over a fairly flooded street, very slowly cause the water level is pretty damn high. All sorts of crap box cars are making it thru fine, and I did too. Immediately after making it thru, my car just gave out on me and died. I parked on the side of the road for about 10 minutes, and she started up with a little hesitation and sputtering, but I managed to get home with no problems no sputtering or anything. I let the car sit overnite in the garage and this morning when I start it up, it smoked a tiny bit, sputtered, and then died. I connected the vag-com and got readings for engine coil misfire (P0300, P0301, P0302). I switched around the coils and did another reading, only to find out that I still got the same reading. The coils are only 2 months old, I just replaced them. When I start the car, it idles around 1,200 RPMs, higher than usual and sputters and shakes a little before it dies. Can anyone offer me some advice on what to do next? I really don't want to take this problem to the stealership... Any advice is much appreciated, as I am not a great mechanic... yet!

Thanks Alot!

My car is a 2002 A4 1.8TQ with 90,000 miles and no mods.

 

yeah looks like u got water in ur intake. do u have an aftermarket intake or stock?

 

Looks like the coils got wet. To be safe check your dip stick
to make sure no water is in the oil.

 

I have a stock intake on the car. How do I tell if my oil has water in it? I checked the oil, and the levels seem fine, but I'm not swure what else to look for.

 

If your oil looks good you're OK.
The water boiled off the coils.

 

Do you still have a belly pan?? There is a ground towards the bottom of the eingine around the mounts i think.. Maybe it got wet and is making your engine cut out a little and is triggering a missfire code. I dont know... Youd have to be driving through 2 ft or more of water to chance sucking any water in unless you had severe weather with horizontal rain pouding against your grille and sucked water in through the intake ducting there.

 

I'll remove the belly pan and try taking a look to see if it is wet. What happens if it is/ or isn't wet ? What's the next step ?

 

Very weird, that sucks man =\

 

really does suck. next time dont drive through the flooded street

 

You said that you got the error codes for coil missfires and when you switched them you got the same code again. Are you sure that the code is a missfire with the coils, or could it be a missfire in those cylinders ? (P.S I'm not saying that's the way it is because I dont know).
Take your air filter out and see if it is wet.
Check your spark plugs
Move the coil that did not get an error code around to different cylinders and scan with vag-com after each switch
Try switching the wires to the coils aswell, scanning after each trial.

It could have been worse !!! Last year we had some flooding and I drove my fathers Ford Explorer into a deep puddel (deeper then I thought) and it violently shut off in the middle. I had sucked water into the engine and filled a few cylinders with water. The Mechanic told me that i was lucky the car had shut off and not turned over another time, otherwise the engine would be about as useless as tit's on a bull. Dad could afford to replace that truck but he loves that old 1995 Explorer. When im on the subject, I will issue a warning for anyone who has an older Explorer. The intake sucks from the bottom of the front bumper! You could probably go through deeper water with an a4