I apologize if this has been addressed before, I took a look around and couldn't find anything that matched my problem.

I started my 01 Jetta this morning and it shook pretty bad. The check engine light was flashing.
I turned it off right away, let it sit for about 30 seconds and fired it up again.
No shaking, no check engine light, no indication anything was wrong.
It has since been fine.
Anybody have this problem before?

I live in northern Canada and it has been pretty cold (-30C or so) and the weather has just warmed up to above freezing in the past week. I don't know if this would affect the car in any way, but I thought I would mention it.


Okay, so upon further research it looks like it is most likely that my coil pack cracked. The weather warmed up, snow melted and moisture entered the crack.

 

The check engine light alerts the driver that one or more of the vehicles computers has detected a malfunction in one or more of the hundreds of systems that these computers manage.