P0351 means the ECU saw an electrical fault in the primary or secondary circuit of ignition coil #1. Usually a failed coil, sometimes wiring, connector, or the ECU's ignition driver.
Scan your own car in about 60 seconds: see whether P0351 is really what it has, how urgent it is, and what the fix should cost. Free on iPhone and Android, on any ELM327 adapter.
Get Skanyx freeP0351 means the ECU saw an electrical fault in the primary or secondary circuit of ignition coil #1. Usually a failed coil, sometimes wiring, connector, or the ECU's ignition driver.
P0351 is a ignition-related diagnostic trouble code classified as moderate severity. When your vehicle's ECU detects this condition, it stores P0351 and illuminates the check engine light.
If your vehicle has triggered P0351, you may notice one or more of these symptoms:
Here are the most common causes of P0351:
No - address this immediately. You can limp home, but don't keep driving on it. A dead coil dumps raw fuel into the exhaust and cooks the catalytic converter fast. Replacement cats run €600 to €1500 on most cars.
Follow these steps to pinpoint the root cause of P0351:
Repair costs for P0351 vary depending on the root cause and your vehicle. Here are typical estimates:
Prices estimated as of March 2026. Costs vary by region, vehicle, and shop.
Full repair guides
P0351 behaves differently depending on your vehicle. Select your car below for model-specific causes and known issues:
5.4L 3V Triton is prone to cracked coil boots and coils arcing to the head. Ford changed the coil version during production, so match the replacement to the one fitted to your truck.
The 1.4 TSI (EA111) and 2.0 TFSI (EA113/EA888) use coil-on-plug units, and several coil versions fit these engines, so check which one is on the car before ordering. On a high-mileage engine, replace the coils as a set of four.
2AZ-FE 2.4L coils are generally durable, and most failures happen at high mileage. Access is straight down through the valve cover, a short job.
R18A1 1.8L often throws P0351 from a corroded connector rather than a bad coil. Check the coil connector and its pigtail before ordering parts.
These codes are often seen alongside P0351 or indicate related issues:
Yes, that's the fastest way. Move coil 1 to another cylinder, clear the code, and drive. If P0352, P0353, or P0354 pops up, the coil is bad. If P0351 comes right back, look at the connector, wiring, or ECU driver.
Yes if you keep driving on it. Unburned fuel from the dead cylinder ignites in the cat and melts the substrate. A drive home is fine, a week of commuting on a flashing CEL usually isn't.
On most 4-cylinder coil-on-plug engines, 10 to 20 minutes. Two bolts and a connector. V6 or V8 engines with coils buried under an intake plenum (BMW N63, Audi 4.2 FSI) can take 1 to 3 hours.
Almost always one of three things: a worn spark plug you didn't replace, oil in the plug well from a leaking valve cover gasket shorting the boot, or a replacement coil that was faulty from new. Fix the root cause first, because a new coil fitted over a worn plug or into an oil-filled plug well fails the same way the old one did.
Not required, but if the car has 150,000+ km on original coils and one just died, the rest are close behind. On engines where labor is significant (BMW N54, VW/Audi TSI), replacing the set once is cheaper than four separate visits.
A 15 euro Bluetooth adapter and a free phone app read the exact fault code a shop charges 30 to 100 euros to pull. Here is how to do it yourself in 5 minutes.
An ignition coil fires the spark plug, and when it weakens the engine misfires. What the coil does, why it fails, the codes naming the cylinder, and the cost.
A failing ignition coil shows up as a misfire, rough idle, and a flashing engine light. Here are the symptoms, the codes that name the cylinder, and the cost.
A flashing check engine light means the engine is misfiring right now. Pull over and read the code: the fix is usually $80 to $400, the delay costs $1,500 up.
An unfamiliar symbol just lit up and you need to know whether to stop. Read the colour first, then find your symbol in the table: every one carries its verdict.
Your car logged P0351. Skanyx reads it on any standard Bluetooth OBD2 adapter, tells you whether it is safe to keep driving, and shows the €55-€1800 repair range so you know the number before a shop quotes you. Free on iPhone and Android, and you do not need to be a mechanic to read it.
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