Misfire in cylinder 3!!

[jenson]

My 2000 Bora 2.0 has started to play up....
My car has been drinking more and more Oil over the past few months, then last week it started chugging and shaking like a tractor with 1 cylinder misfiring...i got it to the VW dealer and after a morning of tests , they said that cylinder 3 has low compression. Oil was leaking into the cylinder and covering the spark plug with crap, leading to the misfire. Changing the spark plugs is only a temporary measure, the engine needs to be opened up and checked out - £2000 minimum cost. the question is, do i bother with this work, or do i keep changing the spark plugs every so often? Is this a terminal issue or something that will sap power and drink oil for years?

Thanks!

[SKODAOCT20vt]

Does the car kick out any smoke ? if so what colour is it? Also - £2000 seems a helluva lot of cash for what essentially a top end job on a reasonably simple engine - A decent specialist would probably be much cheaper. A leakage test may reveal the state of the piston rings 10%-15% leakage would be acceptable. Also Is the coolant in a good state? i.e. not murky or oily - I assume the dealer would have checked these but you never know these days! On the subject of cost it might even be cheaper to buy and fit a decent second hand engine???

Just one other thing that I find dealerships often miss, Is the engine "breather system" block up with oily carbon deposits at all?