Well....
You guys have been great, this has been fun (kind of!) for me too. Here goes:
I took the car around the block earlier today. Ran like garbage. DSG felt like a slipping clutch and the car was vibrating like crazy over 20mph. I got a little concerned. Since I still have the bad motor's intake manifold, I figured last resort I could swap it in to resolve the misfires. Not ideal, that's a long day... But I didn't give up hope yet, something just wasn't making sense. Only one cylinder misfiring? Probably not a PCV valve then. I swapped out coils, no change. So I let it run a bit longer. Flashback: While the motor was out of the car and I changed the intake manifold gaskets, I gave it a go at cleaning the notorious carbon buildup off the intake valves. I scraped and cleaned them and I guarantee some of that gunk hadn't burned off yet or run through the cycles, leading to the misfire code. Well, after about 5 more minutes of running, the CEL went out and it's been gone since! The idle smoothed out and I went for a ride. It is absolutely perfect! Better than when I bought it last year, smooth as hell. Can't even tell it's idling! Like the1bill said, the power steering light and the traction control lights would go out. And they did. I took a photo of it:
No Lights on!
Engine bay now:
And for one more minute of your time, I took some footage of running her up the revs, freaking thing is back and better than ever!
https://youtu.be/u2PyQONRxWE
I started the journey in August!!!! Towed it to 3 different shops, and finally back to my house. AAA Platinum is awesome, BTW
And now she's in the driveway, all done
I can't thank you guys enough for all the encouragement and knowledge. I did this without a Bentley or any out of the ordinary tools other than a triple square bit set and a torx bit set. I bought the hoist on craiglist, where it will return since I've only needed one once in my 40 years. None of this was impossible. Take your time, be patient with stubborn parts, take good notes and photos and you can do this. I now know everything about the engine bay of this car and could do it twice as fast next time. That's valuable too.
I hope I encouraged you all to do the same thing if your tensioner blows up! I'm in it for about $2600 with the motor, hoist and incidentals. Beats $6000+ from the shops, and with lower mileage the car will last longer.
You can do it too. I still can't believe I did.
Thanks for the help
Now to return the garage to its proper owner, my other VW problem child! (but this one's my age, so it's okay):