Bell end of the year award goes to......
me.
egotist? yeah maybe, bellend? most definitely.
Just to bring others up to speed with the background of the story....
Several months ago, when I built my engine I found a head dowel left on the bench, because there are two in the engine between head and block, I thought that one in there would probably be ok....
Fast forward to a few weeks ago and now the engine is running and I find a single valve collet on the garage floor near the exhaust tailpipe.
Now, conceivably there's no way that the collet could have fallen out and worked through the exhaust, though there's this nagging doubt that it pinged out during assembly and remained undiscovered for a while.
I order head gasket and bolts
Paranoia gets the better of me so I decide to pull the cams out. Whilst I'm that far in the engine, it would be foolish not to remove the head and pop in the dowel I'd left out.
I order a pair of dowels
I remove the head, meanwhile BBB on caddy forum comes up with a theory that the 16v has a double ridge collet, there's a chance I could have determined that the rogue collet was not from my engine. Too late as the heads off, I wanted to sort the dowel issue out as well so not a complete waste of time...
I can't really see where my dowel actually fits, but I'm not too worried about that now - I'm sure it'll go in somewhere.
I remove the cams and find that all the collets are properly fitted
Refitting the cam caps, my torque wrench calibration is way out and I snap a stud
I order a stud.
I go in to VW this morning to collect the stud and the dowels, but there's been some mistake....
The one on the right is the one that's missing from my engine, the pair on the left are the ones that VW foolishly think are fitted between head and block

Yeah, a few of you are ahead of me by now....
The block dowels ARE the solid pins AND they are both in my engine.
All the work was completely avoidable and pointless.
However whilst the head was out I could sort the blow on the down pipe, there was a bodged on section between the down pipe and the rest of the system loosely held together with clamps. I got under the car and tacked the bits in place before removing anything, whilst underneath I was reminded I need to do the brake lines front to back and that there were a few sections of underneath that were only in primer and needed some schutz. (black rubbery underbody coating)
After removing the exhaust, I loaded the schutz gun and started, also doing the drivers side front wheel arch whilst I could, I was just about finished when I noticed a 3 in long rusty hole in the drivers sill - god knows how I'd missed that. I guess that's what happens when you work in a poorly lit garage with the car on the deck.
Out with the slit discs and cut out the rot

I've already cavity waxed the sills, so that's going to make the welding even more fun as the heat melt the wax, which contaminates the bit's I'm trying to weld