Hey guys,

I want to rebuild my A4 engine for DD. It's done 174,000 miles on one turbo and it finally decided to go (the turbo that is). Instead of putting a turbo on an engine that will most likely go within the next 20-40,000 I wanted to just go ahead and rebuild it and save myself some money. I am starting this thread to get some opinions on things that I need.

The plan:
I plan on taking the engine out and completely dismantling it. On the bottom end I plan on keeping most of the internals except for the pistons. I was thinking about boring the engine out 1mm - of course the old pistons might have already done that for me (seems like JE and Mahle have pistons for those set-ups), having the block, crank, and rods inspected at the machine shop to make sure they are still in good condition, replace the bearings.
Inspect and maybe replace the oil pump.
All seals will be replaced as well.
Replace timing belt, all the tensioners and water pump.
The head is where I am like a fish out of water: should I replace the timing chain tensioners? Are they reusable? I had a pretty hard time resetting the timing belt tensioners with a hydraulic press when I pulled the pin out before securing the belt in place. I wanted to reuse the valves, however, considering this is an aluminum head, what are the chances that they will be usefull? Should I look for a new head? I wanted to keep the old valves and just replace everything else on the valvetrain (springs, retainers, etc).

I am not doing this to make a fast car (I have a CVT transmission for God's sake) I just want to make this thing reliable for another 50-70,000 miles. I think I will put a K03 back in there, maybe a K04, whichever will come cheaper. Since we don't have to pass emissions in NC, I was wondering if I could gut the exhaust past the CAT. Or maybe remove it completely? Is there software that will tell my ECU that the readings are fine?