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Hi Don,
I'm going to copy the list on this since I think it might be interesting
for archives, and it may clarify some things.
First off, the "fixes" that are in the library are great, but they only
really address one type of coil pack failure. In this failure, the epoxy
cracks or separates from the towers. This causes moisture to get inside
the structure and cause the spark to arc to ground. (misfire)
Although I don't know for sure, I believe each of the 3 coils are
"differential" in nature. That is, there is one spark that runs in
series through both plugs. (Again, I'm not sure about that, except in
the fact that each sub-pack sparks two plugs at a time)
There are really five pieces to the coilpack. There are three coils and
the control module. The fifth piece is simply an aluminum
frame/heatsink.
The problem that I (and others) were experiencing with the Beru
replacement packs seems to me to be more likely an electronics problem
with the control module that is placed inside the pack, which I'm sure
you've seen as you disassembled it.
The fact that the car dies after running for a while implies that the
control module fails when it gets hot. This is, I suspect, a defect in
the manufacture of the control module. Usually when there is a crack in
the coilpack, the car runs poorly until the pack heats up enough to
evaporate any moisture in it. (exactly the opposite of the
"car-dies-when-it-runs-a-while" issue I was having)
Interestingly enough, I disassembled my original Telefunken labeled
coilpack, and to my surprise, I found that Telefunken only makes the
control module. The coils themselves are labeled Beru inside.
Unless you have physical cracks in the epoxy of the pack, siliconing,
plasti-dipping, painting, or whatever process you use will probably fail
to fix any problems with misfiring if the problem lies within the
control module itself.
By the way, my original pack went about 65k miles before I noticed that
it was "leaking" out of the tops of the #1 and #6 plug wires. I did
clean the pack off, sprayed it with electrical-grade silicone and
reinstalled it while I was awaiting a new one. That did temporarily
solve the problem with the CEL and cold-engine drivability problems, but
I found that I could spray water on the thing all day and it didn't
affect the way the car ran one bit; I believe the problem I had was
mostly electronic and not physical in nature. Either that or the
misfiring was due to internal failure of the coil(s) that obviously
external repairs could not correct.
In summary, just keep in mind that the "fix" is not applicable to all
coilpack problems. It's certainly worth a shot, but at least in my case
the original failure (and the bad replacement pack) were not caused by
the problems that the documents in our library address.
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