I have a 350 of unknown heritage which now has a bad miss on #2 cylinder. Compression is 75 psi,and the neighboring cylinder is at 150psi. The plug is very oily; new plugs and wires before the compression check did nothing, as you would expect. The vacuum gage is very steady. The cooling system seems to be losing water, which so far has not shown up in the oil. I loosened the rockers and put air pressure in the spark plug hole and have lots of air coming out of the carb. One odd thing is that while the air pressure was turned on, the water in the radiator did not burp out, as I expected to if there was a bad gasket or cracked head. The head casting number is 3932441. Prior experience with water consumption usually showed up as a very clean spark plug, but not this time. Any thoughts/suggestions before I pull it apart?

[This message has been edited by JWagner (edited 01-15-2003).]

Sounds like you have a bad intake valve on that cylinder head,the engine is a 69 to 74 350 off the head numbers.pull the intake and heads.send the heads to a machine shop,if there damaged beyond repair a replacement head my be the way to go.also get a look at the cylinder wall,if there is a marks top to buttom or a large lip on the top.a complete rebuild maybe inorder.

Dumb question-did you ensure both valves were closed before putting air to the cylinder? If so, then yes, bad valve. I'd think if you have that big of an air leak, you wouldn't get any compression at all in that cylinder. Good luck!

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Sid Coleman, 71 Ragtop
TC (Gold) #174, MCC #347,
Aces #5457, N3JHV@bellatlantic.net