i go through about 5 ignition coils a year mostly when it gets warm,at first i start feeling the car surge a bit when at a stand still at the light this goes on for about a few weeks the the engine light comes on and i run my coder on the car and yes again cylinder misfire today is cylinder 1 i have no clue what to do besides keep changing coils what would make them fail so often.

 

have/Are you adjusted/adjusting the valves?

Your using the stock ones right not cheap eBay ones?

 

adjusting the valves ?

strange i went out and changed the cylinder 1 coil with cylinder 2 if cylinder 1 is closest to the passenger side and read the codes and it still said cylinder 1 then i erased the codes and drove it around and had no engine light come on yet and it is not surging?

 

If your valves get far enough our of adjustment the coils have to work harder, if the engine is running off, the exhaust temp goes up, between the higher current, and the hotter exhaust passages on each side of the coil tubes, they bake out.

Note this is my theory, based on prior issues with other cars.. I just assumed my fit needed the same maintenance as a old civic.. With the chain and 1 overhead cam.. and no hydraulic adjustment.

Oh and I want to try at some point running with and without the air flow tray under the front, I have a hunch that the coils get even hotter without the tray because there is no air pressure upwards without the tray to push air over the top of the engine and down past the coils and exhaust manifold which is like 4" from the coil packs..

 

what leads on a honda fit ignition coil do i check if i wanted to test them out of the car.

 

That is an interesting set of cause and effect - 5 ignition coils. Might need an electrical engineering degree to figure that one out and an oscilloscope.

 

musky123 I really doubt it's the warm weather causing your ignition coil packs to fail because you live in the Great White North. If that was actually the problem then many people from much warmer locations would be complaining about it all the time. However it's not a common issue with Fits and I think for most people these last around 100 K miles (160 K km) or more.

With the limited info about your car it's impossible for the FitFreak community to help out with a diagnostic. You should specify year of car, mileage, mods, other repairs, style of driving, etc.

But I would still recommend you get a professional assessment from a Honda specialist, because there's definitely something wrong with you car and it can lead to other damaged parts / systems.

PS:
I have a partial front grille block year round and full grille block during winter months to help with heating up faster and aerodynamics / fuel mileage. I use a ScanGuage2 to ensure the engine isn't overheating, but I haven't had to change the coil packs yet at 70 K km in a 2013 Fit.
My grille block is easy to install / remove and made with pipe foam insulation from Home Depot.

During spring-summer-fall I remove the upper foam piece to allow air for cooling, but during winter I keep both foam pieces and it's been working out great.

 

Until I see more information, I remain skeptical that valve clearance issues have a direct causal relationship with coil pack failures. I might be wrong but I just don't see the connection other than problems with the coil pack / spark plug do impact combustion. And valve clearance issues (too big / too small of clearance) can impact combustion and could burn / erode the valve and valve seat when too tight.

I agree with Andrei, has to be some other reason or FITs from California across the southwest of the USA would be failing like crazy in the 100 deg F weather.

 

Exactly. In Canada you can literally count on your fingers how many days it gets to 90 F (32 C). It almost never gets up to 100 F (37 C).

 

Thinking about this a little more, I would have to agree that at some point anything electronic wears out or fails due to the number of on/off cycles, hot/cold cycles, extreme heat simply cooking the crap out of it, voltage spikes, vibration, consistently run at too high / too low of a voltage, interference, or just poor quality, etc.

The only other time I've heard of premature coil pack failure was when someone degreased their engine and the spark plug well filled with water (used a pressure washer) and water either got to the coil pack through the bottom (spark plug end) or was driven into the electric connector at the top end and caused it to fail.

So, Musky are you in a wet environment, hose down your engine when the weather warms up, anything you can think of that might get electrics / electronics real wet and do you think there might be a connection with coil pack fails? Any fuses blowing, lights flickering, over rev the engine, etc that seem to happening around the same time as a coil pack failure other than "happens in the summer"?

 

If you change compression you often change plugs, IE colder plugs more compression, if the cylinder pressure is too low it takes more energy/current to make the arc, more of either means more heat in the coil. Dwell times change as the coil heats up, its a convoluted set of variables.
I just know that a 69 bug air cooled motor will burn points out faster when the valves are not adjusted ,, and figure the general issue likely applies here.. bad combustion more heat in the coil circuit.
And above someone said this problem isn't common but it is, my local dealer mechanic says he sees them all the time.. and that "somewhere" between 60 and 100K they seem to go sour on a majority of the cars.. nothing is 100% with electrical stuff, its all on a bell curve.. probably 30% could easily get lucky and dodge the problem..

At the end of the day the coils are between the exhaust ports on the head.
No cooling passages there.. So thats where I'd put the strong bet.. The head cooks the coils.

 

well every summer i go through at least 3 coils to 1 every winter,i just replaced it this morning,the car is a 08 and has 230,000 k on it everything is in good shape and clean,this coil issue has been a issue from day 1 with this car it seems the hotter it is out the more they fail.i will start to feel the car surging at a stop then over a 2 week peorid it gets more noticable then the engine light comes on and it starts surging and acting up at low rpms more then normal driving speed.if we need to ADJUST THE VALVES this should have been a recall,shamefull on there part.

 

What coils? the Factory ones or the eBay knockoffs?Just curious if we can find common denominators for who has coil pack issues..

I've never seen a car with solid valve mechanism that doesn't need a valve adjust regular, maybe only every 60 to 80K but it will need one. Not just Honda either... The part that ticks me off about Honda is that in their eagerness to seem error free they set an expectation that is un-reasonable.

Surging can be a dirty throttle body as well.