I was driving down our local bypass this evening when the previously perfect engine missed a beat but seems to recover and carried on as normal. At the end of the bypass I stopped at the roundabout and couldn't pull away smoothly, it felt like it was running on 3 cylinders and obviously down on power.

Got home and opened the bonnet, the engine is lumpy but ticks over, but there is a loud ticking coming from the carbon cannister which I don't think was there before.

Has anyone got any ideas before I shove it into the dealers for a fault code reset?

Thanks in advance
Mark

Leaving the batt disconnected over night usually resets any faults showing which may not exist any more...

Has a plug lead come astray? Or a plug failed?

All the leads are secure, possibly a plug but it would be unusual to be able to feel the moment it failed, normally the fade away.

It is ticking over OK now on 4, but still sounds hesitant.

Carbon canister ticking loudly is completely normal after a good run in a mk4. It would have always been there but does get louder so you've probably not noticed it before.

I have a 1.8 turbo mine acted the same it was one of the coil packs that had gone down. not sure whether the 1.4 uses the same technology the coil pack is actually part of the plug lead.

I bought an OBD2 reader from the bay of e for £14.00 it came with software so I can now read the fault code and reset when required £45.00 and upward to have it read at a garage

Has anyone tried something like this?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=120437330236

It seems to have more funtionality than most simple scanners

The ELM 327 based scanners work very well, but be aware that there are numerous knock-off devices that have some but not all of the functionality of the genuine device. The ELM 327 is the part number of the internal chip that does the OBD2 decoding, not the entire interface.

The main problem is that the software provided is usually an old version of Scantool, and the newer versions don't work with the ripped-off ELM327 chips.

If that device uses a genuine ELM327 then it's a good price.

Just changed the plugs for genuine ones as I get so much discount (40%) and all seems fine, running better than ever - the old plugs look OK, what do you think?
Rescued attachment Plug Close.JPG