I recently bought a 1996 A4 that was not running to use as a donor car for my wrecked A4. But the donor car is in such good shape, I have decided to repair the engine myself. It has a broken lifter on the #1 cylinder, and the cam lobe is mangled. I bought a good cam and I need some direction on replacing it. I read a post from ImTheDevil about his DOHC timing belt repair, but this is a SOHC, engine code AFC. Do I still want to line up the #1 cylinder at TDC? Also, does this problem sound like anything major has happened to the piston? I have not dropped the pan yet, but that is my first task, just to see if anything is amiss in the crankcase. I have not removed the head either, and I am hoping not to unless absolutely necessary. I checked compression and all other cylinders are good, except #4, which reads 130 lbs, and of course #1 was zero due to the broken lifter.

 

Repair the known issue first before creating more work. And on a V6 it's the #3 cylinder you index at TDC. #1 is for a 1.8T.