Hi all,

Thanks for all the useful advice. As i was uncomfortable about the feel of the engine i took the head off (with the customers agreement) and have found some valve to-piston contact, mostly in cylinder 1, a couple of bent valves and all sorts of other nasties! The cam gear looks ok on an initial quick look but i'll be stripping that down later tomorrow for a thorough look.

Interestingly, the piston crown in cylinder 2, the one initially throwing the misfire code and the +2.99 correction, looks significantly different than the other three! Cyls 1,3 & 4 all show normal signs of combustion with a light black covering and minor amounts of carbon build up, whereas cylinder 2 piston crown looks really clean with no soot/carbon - i can still read the code numbers off the crown! I suspect there's not a lot of combustion going on in this cylinder for quite a while - either that or its had a new piston at some stage.

Cylinder 2 on the right, 3 on the left



Looks like i've inherited a nightmare. I'm still not sure what initially caused the timing to jump, and i've had so many theories run through my mind (including 1 dream!) that i'm not even sure that (a) fixing the timing issue will cure the original misfire and that (b)having not found a definitive 'fault' that caused the timing jump that can i can fix that it wont just happen again!

How do i get talked into doing VAG jobs.........