Corolla Ignition Coil

Wife returned home with the Corolla’s Check Engine light blinking and the car sputtering on 3 cylinders.

She was concerned we’d need a new car!! The engine temperature was ok so didn’t seem serious. The OBD scanner reveals that cylinder 3 was misfiring (Pending DTC means its waiting for a number of these “Diagnostic Trouble Codes” before turning on the Check Engine light).

Since the spark plugs were changed a couple of years ago (and this is a low-mileage car), suspected the problem was the ignition coil. Our Corolla uses a Denso C9496 (099700-2500) coil but it seemed that few were available in Sydney. Of course, this was on a Sunday night so couldn’t call any of the shops.

The NGK U5145 were available from Repco but were about double the fair price. Even the Toyota original part (which is the same as the Denso part) was cheaper. The next day I rang around and everybody seemed to be out of stock. On the 8th call, I managed to find Autoshack in Granville who had stock.

First pull off the engine cover. Haven’t done that for a while and the so-called mechanics have lost 2 of the four mounts.

The existing modules have done more than 100,000 kms so I’m going to change them all (but only bought one to verify if that was the problem).

Unclip the ignition coil module.

Undo the mounting bolt.

It’s always reassuring when the part you buy looks identical to the original.

Car is now running smoothly again and back to normal power.

Ended up changing all 4 as the others are probably close to end of life.