Take the tension of the belt off the charger an check bearings for play. It's odd for a relatively new seal to fail unless there's another issue somewhere.
Can't remember, 12 or 11 12point socket? Think you caught that at the right time mate, I've seen cranks eat into blocks when the thrust washers fail! Glad you've got the love back fella
Sounds like a temperature sensor issue, as the warm up cycle is controlled by the ecu via a signal from the coolant/air temp sensors. Could also be an issue (is it obd1?) with the idle control valve. But vagcom would help diagnosis...
Automatic choke? What are the symptoms? Is it hard to start? Will it idle once started? Does it miss fire? Does it hunt? Could be any number of issues. You need to give us all a bit more info, and have you tried pluging it into vagcom?