Trying to help out a friend. 2.4 ignition coil

Hey all, havent been on in while. I have a buddy that has a 02 2.4 tacoma. He took the truck to a shop for an issue. Said he had a faulty coil. They switched it from cylinder 4 to cylinder 1. Miraculously everything was then fine. No codes, ran fine. A week goes by and the same thing happens again.

He wants to go purchase a coil and asked if I could put it in for him. Im pretty sure I can handle that, but wanted to make sure im not missing anything.

Are we sure its a coil?
Is there a difference in coils for each cylinder?
They said the moved the faulty coil from 4 to 1. Number one is the cylinder closest to the front of the truck correct?
Should I just tell him to take it back to the shop so they can further diagnose at risk of dumping more money at them? hes short on cash and was hoping he could just grab a coil and throw it in.

Thanks for any help guys. Never hung out in the 1st gen section as I have a gen 2, but love the site, bunch of cool people. Its nice to be back lurking around.

 

what type of coil does he have? mine has spark plug wires and are fired by two coils, one fires for two cylinders.

then there are the coils built right into the plug boot and have one for each separate cylinder? (this is what it sounds like he has)

no need to pay a shop for such an easy fix you can do yourself but you need to find out if its now #4 that's not firing and if it is, then you confimed its faulty so you just need to change that one, if #1 is acting up again then its not the coil but something else powering it and putting on a new coil would be no different result then when they switch the coils out the last time.

the coils that sit on top of the plugs are all identical so there is no difference in them.

 

Hey thanks for the info!

Yeah i know that was very vague information, but thats all i got haha. Just approached me yesterday with it in hopes for a quick fix. I told him to go get it scanned at an autozone or whatever for free. That way we know if its showing the same code on cylinder 4 or if the code is now for cylinder 1 where they switched the coil into. Thanks again.