Help me diagnosis: '06 3.2 - rough idle, misfire, Blinking CEL

[tspesh]

2006 A4 (3.2)
160,000 miles
Oil leaks in one valve cover and timing chain gasket
6 speed



About a year ago when cold started the engine would idle pretty roughly with the revs dropping below 1,000 and than shooting up to 1,200. Also, while driving the car would run rough. This would only happen when the throttle input was minimal, think driving through a parking lot in first gear. The performance seemed up to snuff and when pushing the motor hard it drove fine. The symptoms are always worse when it's hot out. The symptoms typically go away after about 30minutes of driving.

I took it to the dealer and they were clueless as to the issue bug suggested spark plugs so we did that and it ran fine until about a week ago and the issues started creeping back. I took it in for an oil change and asked them to try and figure out what was going on. They were again pretty clueless to the issue and made several suggestions including fixing the oil leaks, carbon build-up cleaning, injector replacements. Needless to say that bill was starting to exceed the value of the car and they didn't even seem to know what was going on so I told them not to worry about it. My plan was to take it into the shop I've been having work done on back home in Colorado (out of town for the summer...).

While driving up to an event i was attending yesterday I was in 5th at about 2,000rpm and i pushed the throttle pretty hard to make a slow-ish pass on the highway. The car started rumbling, I legitimately thought it was something like my clutch slipping. The CEL started flashing and the traction control light came on. Once my brain cleared I was pretty certain that one or more cylinders weren't firing.

I was going down the road of thinking maybe it's a coil pack?
The Valve cover leak is actually fairly new, but perhaps a year ago it was leaking just not very much/visibly.
This page seems to indicate that a valve cover leak could lead to oil getting into the spark plug chamber http://www.blauparts.com/audi/audi_oil_leaks/audi_a4_oil_leaks.shtml

The car is beat up a bit cosmetically and while I love it, i'm not in a position to throw down several thousand dollars for a several thousand dollar car just because I enjoy how it drives. Thoughts? need more info? Where can I go from here?

EDIT - UPDATE
Got a hold of a code reader, although the dealership couldn't find anything (they say) i had codes for the MAF and a misfire in Cylinder 2.

[Quattro 4 Life]

Seems unlikely there's one direct thing that will fix it.

I'd imagine a carbon clean and injector cleaning would definitely help. What gas are you running? If you can log misfires I would do that and move coilpacks around to isolate that issue.

Also, have you pulled the new spark plugs to see if they look off?

[o1turbo30v]

"CEL started flashing and the traction control light came on." Flashing CEL is misfires, put new coils and plugs in it, CEL with Traction control light on, is a bad Mass Air Flow Sensor (MAF). A bad MAF can also contribute to other symptoms, another thing to replace is the PCV valve.

[b7_Andy]

@tspesh, you say you're in Colorado? If that's the case I could give the car a carbon clean, which would probably help. I drive an 06 3.2 also. I did a carbon clean at around 60k miles and had some decent carbon build up.


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[tspesh]

@tspesh, you say you're in Colorado? If that's the case I could give the car a carbon clean, which would probably help. I drive an 06 3.2 also. I did a carbon clean at around 60k miles and had some decent carbon build up.
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Yep, but in Chicago until August.

PM me a quote if you could!

[tspesh]

So purchased new coils and plugs, haven't done anything with them yet.
Got a hold of a code reader, although the dealership couldn't find anything (they say) i had codes for the MAF and a misfire in Cylinder 2.