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My girlfriend's 55 plate 1.2L Polo S has been idling very lowly for a little while now and the engine management light occasionally comes on or flashes, causing it to slip into limp home mode. Turning the car off and back gets it out of limp home mode, 9 times out of 10. A local garage had it on their diagnostics machine and that pointed to the coil packs. One was replaced, problem persisted, and we got the other two replaced, as they were still showing up on the computer, apparently.

£160ish later, the problem still persists. Does anyone have any ideas what this may be, or has anyone had similar experiences? Could it be a faulty sensor possibly?

there is a problem with the injectors on the 1.2 or if its been missing a while you could have a burnt out valve take it to vw mate

The engine isn't miss-firing (if that's what you're referring to, please correct me if not). The car actually runs perfectly, bar the low idle occasionally.

My local mechanic is going to plug it in again this week and see what error codes are thrown up. Any further advice would be greatly appreciated though.

tell him to do a compression test also with the injector fault the is an ecu update take to the dealers m8

have u changed plugs and checked the lambda readings in voltage??

TheBoyEllis wrote:My girlfriend's 55 plate 1.2L Polo S has been idling very lowly for a little while now and the engine management light occasionally comes on or flashes, causing it to slip into limp home mode. Turning the car off and back gets it out of limp home mode, 9 times out of 10. A local garage had it on their diagnostics machine and that pointed to the coil packs. One was replaced, problem persisted, and we got the other two replaced, as they were still showing up on the computer, apparently.

£160ish later, the problem still persists. Does anyone have any ideas what this may be, or has anyone had similar experiences? Could it be a faulty sensor possibly?

my sister in law had a similar problem and it turned out to be a faulty cam sensor that was bringing up various error codes apparently this is a common fault with the 3 cylinder petrol vws according to local vw garage. This could be whats wrong with yours, take it to vw.

Thanks for the advice chaps, looks like it'll be off to VW at some stage.

Well, took it to local dealer and they did a compression test - all three cylinders are 'slightly low'. Car still idles roughly.

It's 3 years old, has done 24,000 miles - a potentially knackered engine is simply ridiculous, no? It has been driven lightly around town. I am so angry...

crap engines to be fair i know how you feel my turbos gone after 24000 and 2 years ""

I would have queried the coil packs, known weakness in these VW engines (IIRC).