but then on the drive home i noticed it was stuttering a bit. if im on the gas really lightly (just enough to hold my speed, and speed up VERY slowly) its fine, but as soon as i give it a bit more gas it starts stuttering. until i hit TVIS, then it takes off as per normal without missing at all. when its stuttering i can hear it in the exhaust manifold, almost as if theres some popcorn in there ...

now ive played around and tried a lot of different things (injectors, dizzy, vacuum lines, map sensor, TPS etc etc) and the only thing which made it any better is if i unplugged the blocked hose off the 3rd output thing on the manifold (same thing the map sensor and fuel regulator vac lines go to).
i've also played around with the timing a bit, turned the dizzy clockwise and it didn't make it any better, turned it anti-clockwise and now it seems to be fine.
i haven't got a timing light handy at the moment, but if the timing was out could it be causing this or does it sound like ive got a more serious problem than that?? i wouldn't have thought if the timing was out by a little bit it would cause this sort of problem, but its about the only thing i can think of.
EDIT: oh and I also swapped the injector plugs on #2 and #3 around. don't know if it was just my imagination or not, but it seemed to fix it up a little bit. im sure the plugs can go to any injectors though can't they? not like HT leads or anything that need to be in a particular order...
cheers.