+1 on a water jacket bursting. Could be the cause of the damaged head and so on.

 

Well it looks like any way it goes I'll be pulling my first 1.8t... If someone can link me to the best step by step on pulling it, it looks almost too tight to slide the engine forward to get it out, what's easiest??

 

Dont think there is one, at least on this forum. Maybe on the Zine or Audiworld. The engine will come out the front once the car is in service position. Tag and label everything. It's tedious as hell but you'll hate your life later on if you don't.

 

Hell yeah to that.

 

Spoken by one who is doing this job now and knows what the hell he's talking about.

 

Sometimes my mind is slow to comprehend what my eyes have seen, being as many of you have suggested a head issue, i guess it would be wise to first pull the head before i go dragging the whole motor out....

 

Its worth a look. I just saw that you have the 1.8. If you had the 2.8 I would have told you just to save yourself some time and swap the motor.

 

Well I finally got a chance to get the head off today. the first thing i noticed was that there was wet oil standing in the exhaust side of the turbo so I'm guessing the turbo seal is gone. Now as far as the compression goes, I started looking at the top of the gasket and the block for any obvious signs of something blowing through. Then I noticed that the gasket had seperated in the middle 2 cylinders. I've built a few motors but never payed attention to new head gaskets. Is this gasket surely blown because the layers are seperated? I can't remember if new ones are like this or not. The valves don't show any damage and the tops of the pistons look great, the cylinder walls even still have the factory cross hone marks. I'm going to take the head to the machine shop and have it cleaned up and checked out anyway, but I really hope this is just a head gasket...