Kester

Garage reckons it’s the camshaft, or hole in valve lifters. May be more than the car is worth. or I can take the plunge and try and do it myself 🤣

Thanks for all this advice. The black plastic rocker cover has like 16 captive bolts and an oil seal, and the oil filler cap. So I assume it keeps the top cams bathed in oil, and I can’t run engine with this off. I’ll try and clean up the oil and see if I can see any blow-by residue. But I fear any problem won’t be obvious 😞

I’ve never had cause to investigate injectors on a vw tdi. I’ve removed the rocker cover, but everything is very oily and I can’t see any obvious crud. Obviously I’ll wipe it off, and check more carefully, but should any blow-by from injectors be very obvious, or would I need to remove injectors to see it? I presume I cannot run engine with the rocker cover off. Im a bit nervous of how hard it might to prove to remove injectors, and then replace them properly...

Will do, cheers

My daughters A3 started chugging at idle, louder higher frequency at revs. Extra loud when removing the EGR pipe or the air box. I was expecting to see some loose intercooler/air/vac pipe, but couldn’t find any, and no changes when squeezing/wiggling pipes. No engine fault codes thrown with my ODB11 :( The black box (valves?) that all the vacuum lines connect into has a high frequency whine, but assume that may be normal? Any ideas what to look for before I give up and take to local garage? Cheers