[ALF_E90]

As per my whinge a couple of weeks ago, my 2007 (N53 engine,ED) 330 had a coil pack fail recently, at 22k miles and one month out of the manfacturer's warranty. Another had also failed exactly one year earlier. Given that I had already purchased the Gold level enhanced warranty (that only comes into effect on 15th Feb) BMW paid half the bill, which was still £150.

Well today the engine management light came on again, with the same symptoms (obviously running on 5 cylinders) at the end of a drive. Thank god, it started as normal on the next start - I use the car a lot for work and have some vital meetings a long way away tomorrow.

Which begs some questions. Can they play up before failing? I would assume they were working, or not. Can anything else cause them to fail? Both times it has happened after a fairly spirited DCT-on drive - but nothing like a thrashing. The car generally has a fairly easy life of long journeys and no town driving as my 34-36 mpg average attests. And how much work is involved in changing all the coil packs? The £150 bill as "half" the price for one took me aback - what would an indie charge to do the lot?