Porsche Cayenne Spark Plug Replacement RennsportKC

Had this little Pepper come in for a check engine light indicating a couple of misfire codes on different cylinders. There are a couple different things that can cause misfires, one being the spark plugs, and the other being the ignition coils. With modern cars, most vehicles use a separate coil pack to fire each spark plug. In the old days, you had a distributor with a cap and rotor and spark plug wires running to each plug, along with a main ignition coil. The modern approach is much more simplified, there are no plug wires, no distributor, no cap or rotor, just an electrical harness feeding a coil and spark plug. The difference is that on older cars your maintenance repairs were cap, rotor, coil, wires, and spark plug replacement. Now days you only replace the spark plugs and coils. The coils do add up though, so it can make the cost of a spark plug change more expensive. For most cars now, it is smart to replace the coils and plugs at the same time if you are getting misfire codes. The coils will crack and wear out and require regular replacement along with the plugs. For a DIY guy, you might be able to just change plugs if you are willing to do the job twice if you end up having faulty coils, but as a shop, we try and replace them all at once.

After a bit of work, the nice covers are removed, exposing the coil packs.

And here we have plugs and coils removed from the car. As you can see, the coils insert on to the end of the plugs like so.

A simple electrical connector. 12v power is turned into a powerful spark to ignite the air fuel mixture in the cylinder.