it's been almost a week of troubleshooting what's going on with my Beast. All started a few days later after i picked it up from the mechanic where it was for timing belt kit and a few other bits. The car was running great until last Tuesday when it all started, after a few runs it started to shake, it was low on power and barely pulling, initially i thought that one of the turbos failed or an intercooler hose, pulled over and at idling was the same, so i was relieved. Plugged in the vcds there was a misfire error on the cylinder 3, so naturally started with the plugs but when pulling out the coil connector and then trying to plug it back in the connector simply shattered, obviously because of the heat-cold cycles it became very brittle as most of the engine wiring harness i guess.

So called my mechanic and he sent me 2 coils with connectors. I probably should've solder the new connector, instead i took the interior part of the connector and put it in mine, as that is what actually broke, that plastic thing that separates the 4 wires inside the connector so they don't touch each-other, and it worked alright.

However, changing the spark plugs didn't help much as soon after a coil started to malfunction, on the same cylinder, it wasn't as bad as the misfire caused by the spark plug but it was still very noticeable, initially i thought it's the connector but i said i'd give a shot and change the coil with one of one my mechanic sent me, and finally that helped, all this took me 4 evenings of troubleshooting, but finally looks like it's ok now.

What's the conclusion? well, definitely the engine wiring harness gets damaged in time by the heat and i don't really feel very comfortable knowing that, examining the other connectors, not only the coils ones, they all seem to have started to develop cracked insulation and that is not a good sign at all. Also read some horror story on one forum where a guy had issues with his engine(also RS6) wiring harness and that caused an early detonation and destroyed 2 cylinders, so that really freaked me out.
So, with that mind i have already bought a used harness from Germany from a car with 60k miles, my theory would be that Germany has a colder climate and given the lower mileage it should be a whole lot better than mine plus the price was also good, compared to $1500 for a new one.

Then what do you guys think about coils? should i get them all replaced? i know there were some discussions on other forums about the coils made by Matushita(think so) which are the best ones, they're the same used for A4, TT, etc...where could i find these?