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[philsteward]

Hi all, have had a look through search but not managed to find exactly what I am after.

For the past year (since owning the vehicle) it has had a slight tapping noise on cold start up, goes away after a few seconds. Thought it was either the lifters or manifold gasket, bought enough oil to do 3 quick changes to eliminate the lifters, only done the first change and 300 miles so far! Took the heat shield off the manifold and manifold looks fine, no sooting obvious. Just tried tweaking the nuts, and 3 of them were loose, two on cylinder 4, one on cylinder 1. Put it all back together and drove for a couple of hundred miles, no change in the tapping on cold start.

Now for the last two weeks, it has misfired on cold start, only for about 10secs, then ran fine. This has got quickly worse over the last 5 cold starts. Once the car with a spanner light came on for a minute, and then cleared as I picked up to about 40mph. Now it has the misfire continuously. Not allowed it to warm up fully, but it didn't go after 5 mins so stopped before causing damage. EML came on with:
P0303 - Cylinder 3 Misfire
P1781 - Engine Torque Signal Circuit (pending)

Any ideas where to start? Would like to investigate in the most logical order and with least amount spent (but happy to replace faulty parts with OE ones if necessary).

Have just got plugs as not sure when they were last done, any way of checking the coil pack is okay?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[TheBoy]

Happen on petrol, LLP, or both?

Coil pack, remove and visually inspect. Post up close up pics if you want 2nd opinion

[philsteward]

Happen on petrol, LLP, or both?

Coil pack, remove and visually inspect. Post up close up pics if you want 2nd opinion

Misfire on petrol, as that is what it starts on when cold. But until this last time, it ran fine on petrol after 30 secs or so. Now it is misfiring all the time, not warmed it up enough to switch onto LPG so dont know.

Will remove the coil pack in a min and post some pics...

[philsteward]

Pics:
Coil pack & plugs 1 to 4 left to right


Coil pack 1 & 2


Other side


Coil pack 3 & 4


Other side


Plugs 1 & 2


Plugs 3 & 4


Underneath 1 & 2


Underneath 3 & 4


Top


Top of engine


Any good? Any problems noticed?

Cheers!

[TheBoy]

No 3 on coil pack looks a tad suspicious, but hard to tell from pic. Any chance of a close up, very high res pic of the first side?

[philsteward]

These any better?

[TheBoy]

To me, that looks to breaking down.

Anyone else agree/disagree?

[philsteward]

Well I put the new plugs in and stuck the old coil pack on and it is better. No misfire at all now. Will wait and see though, as plus didn't look too bad.

Have done some more searching and some have said the P1781 code should not show on my 2.2 but that it could mean the cam sensor is failing. Could that be causing the misfire?

Cheers