Mk4 1999 GTI 1.8T - engine cutting out

[PacificShack]

Hi there,

I'm after so help please! I have a 1999 Golf GTI Mk4. It's fitted with a 1.8T 20v engine. Great car (although not as good as my older Mk3 GTI in bright blue is use to own in the UK).

It has a problem I'm trying to resolve, and from what I can gather so far, is quite a common problem.

The engine has a bad habit of cutting out. The power is occasionally jerky, not smooth all the time. When this happens the revs drop all of a sudden to the point whereby the engine cuts out. This has happened to me on many occasions and i thank the lord I haven't crashed it yet. The car then starts and off we go for another 5 minutes.

From what I have learned so far the engine in this car has coil packs on each plug. Is this correct? From also what I have been told from VW this morning, it would be quite a rare event for all 4 packs to die at the same time. The chap in the parts section of VW told me there is a power control unit with LAS in brackets after this which sits above the coil packs in the food chain (get my drift?) Would this be my problem, or would it be something else?

Any help I can get would be great - i'd hate my wife to be driving the car incase something happens and she ends up in an accident.

Thanks.

[sambo]

Hi,

Ive got a similar problem. When i put my foot down hard sometimes the power is not a smooth curve, but a bit jerky, still pull's fairly well but sometimes feels a bit flat. It has also cut out a few times, normally when going down hill slowly. The idel used to flutter a little bit too, but only ranging from like 600-800 ish..

I would be interested to see what other people have to say, and if it would log onto the vagcom record as luckily i have a mate who works for VW main dealer and likes doing jobs on saturdays

Anyone got any info?

Cheers, Sam

[PacificShack]

Update.

I had a mate plug in a VAG Com piece of software to run diagnosis on it Sunday. Came up with an Air Flow Sensor fault. The fault would clear, and the car would drive fine, but the problem came up again yesterday with cutting out, so it went straight in to the garage today to get fixed.

I did have a similar problem on a MK2 Golf driver once - that cut out when the engine was hot when the car was above 70mph. Turned out to be the air flow getting stuck which caused carburetor icing.