air flow or coil?

[trickynicky]

hiya, i have mk4 golf 1.8 gti, 1999. When i change into 2nd gear and upwards it  looses power. It still moves but goes dead sluggish then eventually picks up again untill i change gear and does it again. I can't pull out in front of anyone in case they hit me up the arse.
I've been advised that it could either need a new coil or else it could be the air flow control. So to check which it is (as they are both around ?80) i unplugged the air flow control and drove a small distance, thinking if it runs ok with that unplugged then it must be that. But it ran like sh!t, even worse than before. So i plugged it back in again and now it seems alot better but you know when you can tell somethings not quite right. So now I'm none the wiser. Is it possible the plug was loose and now it's a bit better it means the problem is with the coil?
Confused? I am
Anyway if anyone knows what i'm talking about let me know
ta

[davidhawkins_78]

More than likely it'll be the MAF (which is the sensor you unplugged), that model is notorious for it!

If you tried to drive it unplugged then it will run like a sack of spanners as the ECU is getting no reading what so ever of the volume of air it's receiving. The MAF measure the incoming air and the ecu then adds the right ammount of fuel to create the correct mixture for that RPM. So you can kinda see if the ECU is reading no air when in actual fact there is, the mixture will be all over the place - hence the dodgy performance.

VW have had soooo many problems with these on this age Golf they even do an exchange for ?70 - they were ?270 till they realised the scale of the problem !!

Hope this helps ...

[laserblaster]

before spending money on a ''may be'' part get the fault codes read! if there is something wrong electronicly then it will tell you! and save you 's on new parts which may not need replacing!!