So my Audi has gone through hell lately, in the worst of ways. I haven't driven the car in 2 months and now that I thought everything was fixed. Nope...
For starters, I broke a timing belt, well actually I didn't. And I know what your thinking "Why didn't you get it changed?" Well, I did, I actually got it changed in February. I live in an area devoid of "Audi mechanics" my mechanic did not change the tensioner roller when he did the job. 10k miles later the thing apparently flew off. I didn't actually break my belt, but when one of the rollers goes through your timing cover, you may as well have.

1 rebuilt top end of the motor later (new valves, gaskets everywhere, new timing components): My car finally gets finished. 2 days ago, my mechanic cranked it up, and it ran just fine. Then he drove it down the road and it started misfiring on cylinder 1, bad.
So he's tested the basics, but in a more manual way than most audi owners probably would. For starters, we know its cylinder 1 because you can pull the coil pack out of each cylinder 1 at a time with it cranked and it gets worse when you pull out 2, 3, &4 but stays the same if you pull out 1. IE: 1 i not working.
So we swapped coil packs, injectors, and spark plugs between 1&2. The problem still exists in cylinder 1, no change. Process of elimination, all that stuff is fine (Maybe I'm missing something there).

Why the head gasket debate? Well, it looks like I'm getting compression in my coolant system. If you take the lid off the coolant reservoir with the engine cranked its systematically pumping coolant out. Which he says would be caused if the head gasket was allowing air into the coolant. Ok, sure.
However, I've blown a head gasket before (different car, back in the day) and I'm not having problems that I had then. No smoke out the tail-pipe. It doesn't appear that anti-freeze is getting into the engine. There is no anti-freeze on the dip-stick. I'm left wondering if the head gasket could be messed up in a way that air can get in when the car is running, but water doesn't get in when it's off. That seems plausible to me, system under pressure would be more prone to leaks.
I bought the gasket set for a total top-end rebuild online, and we did already have a problem with one of the seals leaking oil.

I guess my question is. If you were skipping on Cylinder 1. And you had checked the coil packs, injectors, and spark plugs. What would be next?
Is this head-gasket thing plausible?
What if the head-gasket gets replaced and it's still bad?

 

They may not have properly torqued everything...or worse yet you could have a cracked head. It should leak REAL bad and smoke if you had a cracked head though. Sounds like someone screwed up the job...