A bit unrelated but thought I would share it with you anyway, The AA came to recover a customers car from our industrial estate last week, it was a vauxhall that wouldnt start. The AA man arrived and we watched him trying to start this car by cranking it over for about 20 mins, ending up with a flat battery. This wasnt enough so he attatched a booster pack and asked the cars owner to crank it over on the key, he then appeared from the back of his van with a ball hammer and started HITTING THINGS IN THE ENGINE BAY
We went over to see if we could help, he said 'its the EGR valve mate, its blocked' we informed him that we could see and smell unburnt fuel from the exhaust and its likely that the intake manifold flap was probably stuch shut as its a common problem (and that you cant unblock an EGR valve by hitting it with a hammer) so he spent about 3 mins looking round THE BACK OF THE ENGiNE with a torch, we helped him out by pointing him in the direction of the intake manifold flap motor and he said, that fine, I am looking for the intake , which we then pointed out at THE FRONT OF THE ENGINE. aT THIS POINT WE RETREATED BACK TO WORK.
We then watched as he tried to pinout the fuse box to try and open the manifold flap manually before cranking the engine for what seemed like ages, smoke started pouring from under the bonnet and the starter motor died! He then played around with the fusebox and poked his test probe into what seemed like random pins, spoke with the customer and drove off, later a pickup truck came and took the car away.
Later that week we found he had cracked the casing on the EGR valve by hitting it with his hammer, killed the starter motor and wiring looms to it, fried the ECU with his random poking around with probes and the repair bill came to over £1200!
The vauxhall dealer then replaced the intake manifold flap, which turned out to be the only problem all along!
Still want the AA to fit your coilpack
