Coil pack miss

[kansjfr]

I just had my valve cover gaskets and spark plugs changed on my 2001 Q45 with 92k miles on it. Shortly afterward, I got the dreaded coil pack miss in the engine, but the miss was intermittent. I was getting ready to start changing the coil packs, as a frequent topic on this forum is that the coil packs are real fragile and they often fail after being disturbed. My mechanic told me that if a coil pack was bad the miss would be constant instead of intermittent. he suggested that since the new plugs were probably putting out a stronger spark, the coil pack boots might be letting the spark plugs occasionally ground out. I bought new boots for all of the coil packs for $5 each, put them on and that solved the problem. This might save someone from having to buy new coil packs when the real culprit is the boots. We could see the traces of carbon where the spark plugs bled through the boots. Hope this helps someone.

[3Q Jay]

interesting. while your mechanic's logic is flawed (leaky plug boots won't ground the plug--also new plugs that are easier to fire will be less likely than old pugs to have stray leakage)--the premise of leaky boots, and leaky boots exacerbated by change out of the plugs is valid.
this is a perfect case in point of using a small amount of dielectric grease ON THE BOOTS when re-installing the coil pax. the point is not to get the grease on the electrical contacts, rather to 'seal' the boot to the porcelain. of note, the service manual for my audi specifically recommends lightly greasing the lip of the coil boots at plug replacement--maybe infiniti (nissan) hadn't considered people would be keeping their cars until the 3rd set of plugs?
Please also share your source for the boots only.

[kansjfr]

Autozone is where i bought them.