Ignition coil instantly burning out!! Frying tonight!!

Hopefully somebody has had a similar problem to me!

A couple of weeks ago my mrs broke down in our 97 8v 2.0L GTI. The RAC came out and replaced the coil which on starting the engine 'fizzed like a firework' to quote him! He did not have a spare to try another in case of a faulty part so I purchased a (cheap) HAAS coil pack and fitted it with the same result (although no fizzing).

Somewhere along the way the earth strap broke at the engine end too!

Garage also struggling with the problem!

Anybody any ideas or could be scrapyard in the sky and just fitted a recon gearbox and was running great!

Thanks in advance!

what is happening when you crank the engine?

did you check fault codes and see if measuring blocks make sense?

Have you checked the leads/cap/rotor arm?

I had a lead fail, which prematurely wore out my ignition coil, which ive just finally replaced after picking up the symptoms on my wednesday drive home.

If its a cheap coil, it could break instantly, but basically you have a situation where the coil is building HT, and it has nowhere to discharge to (i.e sparkplug). So it ends up discharging through the insulation and blowing up the coil.

So you have a connection failure between the coil output and the distribution side. I would replace everything downstream before throwing another cheap coil on. Also I have had previous experience of aftermarket coils, not good either. I had an ARC coil fail the same day I fitted it, and lasted 30 miles.