Down shift and Car dies, won't start again!

[dubbin8516v]

Alright its a 03 GTI 20th and went to pass a truck this morning on the way to work. I went from 4th to 3rd and then got a flashing oil light for a max of 5 seconds, loss of power and the car turned off.

I pulled over and tried to start it again, nothing.
I popped the hood checked all belts and everything is fine, marked the timing belt to make sure its turning and yes it does.
I unplugged the MAF and still no start.
It cranks strong, the battery is only 6 months old, I changed out one coil a few weeks ago but that was a whole different problem.

Due to where my car is at the moment, I cant hear the fuel pump priming and I pulled the relay and tried to run a test on it. Not running still.

My car is sitting on the side of a road and I am new to the 1.8t side of VW's. Any information would be amazing.

Yes, I have done a lot of reading on the issue or others somewhat like it but they all have a different outcome and so if someone else has ever had this problem it would be great for advice.

Thank You!

[IanInOhio]

VAGCOM it is the best I can think of.

Check your coil pack. The 1.8t coil packs are pretty lousy at best in terms of reliability and durability. Find someone with a 1.8t MAF and see if that'll do it. With some 1.8t engine codes (AWM for instance) it will not run without the MAF.

Just that oil light thing is really out there.

So again, take a VAGCOM to it, see what pops up. Hopefully it's nothing major

[dubbin8516v]

Alright here is the update, once I was able to actually check fuses, I found number 37 blown and replaced it and it started right up.

Not sure what was causing it to blow as I had blown 5 more on the way to a parts store. Once I got to the part store and replaced everything and bought extra fuses, I started the car up and had a miss. I was in traffic at the time of wanting to pull over to look into the miss and the next thing I know there was smoke coming from my engine bay.

Now not worried about traffic, I popped the hood and found that coil for cylinder one had blown up and smoking. I then got help and pushed the car into a drive and and replaced the coil.

Ever since replacing the coil, it has ran great.

I have never had a reason to buy Vag-Com but now with what happened yesterday, it will be my next investment.

I know about running the new 2.0 coils on a 1.8t is a small upgrade without braking the bank, but curious if that's a good thing to do or if stock coils are worth it?

[IanInOhio]

Ha, I was right! Lol, sorry. I had a feeling it was the coil pack.

Anyway, yes. Ditch the 1.8t coil packs. They are crap - junk - deserve to be blown up (literally in your case). Switch over to the 2.0t packs. I think they need gapped though (I haven't done so myself, and my 1.8t pack causes me to miss sometimes, and keeps my idle bouncing about 20~ rpms)

There's a million writeups on what to use how to use etc.

Good to hear it wasn't anything major