1998 1.6 Sport stuttering while accelerating hard and high idling

Hi,

I have an S reg Audi A3 1.6 Sport and have been having a couple of problems with it.
The first problem is that when I start the car the rev counter stays on about 1200rpm for about 5 minutes and then goes back down to normal (about 900rpm). If I turn the ignition off and turn it back on it is fine but the problem is there if it is hot or cold outside. This is not a big problem but it is annoying as the car almost stalls when the revs go back down after 5 minutes. I have had this problem for pretty much six months since I got the car.

The second problem seems unrelated to the first as it has only been happening over the last 2 weeks. The car has been stuttering or to put it another way 'bunny hoping' under medium to hard acceleration in gears 1 and 2. It does not stall when this happens.
The only thing that might be causing it is that I changed from getting my petrol from the Esso garage that I normally go to to a Tesco's garage.
I have read on forums about coil packs and cleaing the air filter might fix the problem but I really don't know much about cars, although I have taken the whole front of my A3 off to change the electric fan once so I'm not afraid to work on the car if anyone has any suggestions as to what might fix these two problems.
Also no warning lights come on the dashboard!


Cheers

Also forgot to mention, when I accelerate hard sometimes it feels a little less powerfull than normal as though it is not accelerating as fast as it should.

Thanks Shy19s I'll give that a try today

Yes I sorted out the stuttering problem. It was mainly a faulty spark plug. For a few days it was going really slow. I have replaced the coil pack, all four spark plugs and all four ht leads. I got all the parts off ebay for about £10 each. When I went to replace them I found one of the spark plugs had a lot of petrol on it so that is what had caused the loss of power and stuttering. The ht lead attached to the spark plug looked pretty bad aswell. I didnt need to replace the coil pack but the new one did make it run even better and at £10 off ebay it was well worth it. Replacing the spark plugs and ht leads on my A3 with engine code AVU was a nightmare though, had to remove the lower section of the the variable inlet manifold and ht leads are easily damaged when removing them.

As for the high idle, you are right TheSpaceCowboy, I have been told this is totally normal, shows how much I know about cars!

I also checked the vacuum pipe and that was ok, I didnt touch the throttle body though-seemed a bit too complicated from the guide in the haynes manual.

Its def a 'Sport' model, I should have got a 1.8 Turbo instead though-Live and learn!