How to Diagnose Coil Failure on Kia Sportage

Got a Check Engine light on in your Kia and a shuddering condition when you accelerate? There may also be a popping sound (backfiring) if you rev up the engine in park or neutral. Here's how to diagnose what's wrong:

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Auto parts store with scanner or OBD II
• Fearless attitude

1. The first step is getting it scanned. No visual inspection of the engine compartment will tell you what's wrong with your Kia if a coil failed. Check your oil, radiator and transaxle fluids. If you are able to drive the car to an auto parts store, get it SCANNED for free. They make enough money off of the parts they sell to do-it-yourselfers to be able to offer you this service free of charge. If the car won't accelerate enough to negotiate traffic, find a mobile checker and get them to come to you. It probably won't be free, but it will still be cheaper than a wrecker.

2. They connect their scanner to your onboard diagnostic link and it reads the ram and rom in your car's computer, which tells what component has quit on you. You don't need to know a whole lot about cars or components. Once they've retrieved the codes, they can print out the result for you. You have the option at this point to buy the part and install it yourself, or pay someone.

3. If your Kia Sportage had several hard fault codes, you may have multiple problems but that bucking, lurching and backfiring that made you think the transaxle was about to fall out, was just the coil. Relax. A coil for your 2.0 runs about $39 and can be installed with sockets and a ratchet. (I did one in the dark the other night in about 30 minutes.)

4. There is one more method for diagnosing, called "Known Good Part". You can simply replace each coil with a new one and road test to see if it worked. It's more expensive and frustrating to throw parts at your car, but in some cases you don't have any other options. If your car won't drive at all and you can't pay for parts if you call a wrecker, you may be better off gambling on the parts.

Tips & Warnings

• The coil is located under the rectangular plastic cover on top of the engine that runs under the plenum and the throttle cable bracket.
• The gasket between the throttle plate & plenum is metal, and reusable.
• There are only two coils on the 2000 model 2.0, held in with 2 bolts each.
• Careful! Don't break the plastic electrical lead, they get brittle. Squeeze the tab in to disengage.
• Check behind you for parts that fall off

[joshel]

on 1/14/2009 I don't own one of the Kia sportage, but i enjoyed the knowledge about how to diagnose coil failure.

[01Bri-Guy]

on 12/16/2008 Good tips. Alldata is another great resouce for walk through flow charts written by manufacturers specific to each code.

[btriex]

on 12/16/2008 happened to my buddy. good article

[ChristyBuena]

on 12/16/2008 Ugh! I had this same problem with my Kia Sportage while I was in college. I've since traded it in because it was becoming a huge headache!

[dasbootjoe]

on 12/16/2008 This is very specific and should bring you more money! Great work on this one! Thanks for sharing*****