1996 960 3.0 lumpy idle - is it serious?

[JamesB]

1996 965 3.0CD, 173,000 miles. Just had a call from my wife - it's idling very lumpily, to the extent of shaking the entire car. Got her to work OK, but it's "not driving right".

Any suggestions? The pessimist in me says head gasket - which, given that I had it done around 5k ago, would be bad ...

[JamesB]

Update: The car got towed to Carpenters in West Molesey (thanks to GEM Assist), who called just now to say that one of the coils was u/s.

So nothing too serious, thankfully, and I can pick it up later

Cheers

James

[RollingThunder]

That was good news James, although the coils aren't cheap IIRC!

As an aside, what do you think of GEM? My RAC renewal was £120 or so this year which stung, I can tell you! The old 850 was the cause - all those non-starts at home Good riddance to that ...edit... patience tester!

[JamesB]

£85 + VAT to supply & fit the coil, so not exactly cheap - but then the car's been pretty good to me recently (despite my forgetting to MoT it ...) so I'll forgive it this once. If the other five coil packs decide to head South in rapid succession, we'll have words.

This is the first time we've had to use GEM since joining, and no complaints. The chap correctly diagnosed some sort of H/T problem and happily delivered the car to Carpenters. Hopefully we won't need them again for a while ...

Cheers

James

[JamesB]

One last post: I should point out, to be fair to Carpenters, that it was £85 inc vat, not plus vat

Picked the car up today, idling smoother than it ever has during the year I've had it

[RollingThunder]

Thats an excellent price - I paid about £65 IIRC six years ago!

BTW one thing to look out for on the 960 3.0 24v which this has just reminded me about - if you remove the coverplate to access the sparkplugs, etc, in the centre is a rubber oil/breather (I can't remember what it was) pipe. Mine was leaking a bit and this apparently contributed to my coil failure - might be something for you to check/rectify.