ripped off?

yeh they took it to get machined properly
spoke to the garage again they reckon the headgasket could possibly have been the wrong one! which comes as a surprise ive told them just to go for the further inspection. i love the car and i need it and id like to know for once and for all exactly what is wrong! i will update!

thanks for all your help so far though

More importantly have the reasons for the headgasket failure been dealt with? The gasket is a failure point and usually as a result of other issues. Hear loads of stories where the job is done, head skimmed etc.. but the route cause is not dealt with ie leaking rad, blocked rad.....various issues can lead to it.

I may be wrong but aren't these prone to no.4 cylinder getting too hot due to the inline layout and can cause issues? Someone else will know more on that one.

That is a good point maybe there is a underly cause that should be investigated On the subject of head skimming it is never a good idea to skim heads unless they are distorted outside of manfactures tolerance you have to bare in mind everytime you skim metal off you infact raise the compression that can lead to more head gasket problems.
Also if the head is distorted outside of tolerance then the complete head has distorted hence also putting cam shaft bearings out of line you may skim the head flat but you cannot correct the out of line issue.