Ignition Coil Pack Replacement on a 2008 Saturn Astra is Tuesday’s featured repair, brought to us by a client from West End, Vancouver.
Our client’s 2008 Saturn Astra came to us running very poorly. So rough was the engine, that we were barely able to drive it around the parking lot and into the shop.
As usual, diagnosis was our first step: we connected our scan tool and retrieved six stored trouble codes. When there are this many codes it is critical to determine which ones are related to the current concern. This is where a technician’s skills and expertise come into play. In this case we figured that the misfire codes: P0300 and P0304 were the most important as the engine had a severe misfire.
Further testing revealed that the Ignition Coil Pack was defective. Number four cylinder’s coil was not firing at all due to an internal fault in the assembly. This Saturn uses an integral coil pack, otherwise called an Ignition Cassette. It’s a rather nifty unit that bolts down in one piece overtop of the spark plugs and is simply connected at one end by a wiring plug. The PCM (Powertrain Control Module) sends electrical signals to each coil when it’s time to fire.
While this unit generally works well they do have a high failure rate. The part is easy to replace but is very costly.
The Saturn Astra was only sold for two years: 2008 and 2009, so this is a pretty rare model of car. When working on this car it is clearly not your typical American vehicle and that is because the car is in fact built in Belgium. It is known in Europe as the Opel Astra.
For more information about the Saturn Astra click on this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Astra#Astra_H_.282004.E2.80.932009.29
For more information on ignition coils click this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignition_coil
