Ignition Coils

[lj35pilot]

Anyone know how long the ignition coils normally last on the M52? My '99 323i develops a light skip after having been driven at highway speeds for a couple of hours. It's noticeable only after you've slowed down or come to a stop and then began accelerating again. The car has always had the same skip when you ended up in 4th or 5th gear at a low speed and tried to accelerate without downshifting, but grows more pronounced once having been driven at higher speeds for awhile.

I changed the plugs a few months ago since I had no record of when the last time it was done. I used the original equipment NGKs and the old plugs were a nice dark tan color with no signs of oil seepage into the cylinder and all were dry. Since it didn't cure the issue, I figured the coils might be the next place to start. They're the originals and the car had 152,000 miles on them. Am I looking in the right direction or does anyone know of any other sensors that might be causing the problem. O2 sensors maybe?

[Jeron]

You problem may be a bad coil.

It is not unusual for a coil to go bad within 150k miles.

Without a CEL it will be hard to determine which, if any coil is bad.