Yep, it's dead! When I parked it I thought it had a blown head gasket because that's what it was acting like.... Except there was no smoke or oil in the water. When I took it apart the head gaskets looked fine.
Well, fast forward to last week end. I torqued the heads down and adjusted the valves. I decided that I should run a compression check before I buttoned it all back up "just in case" because I forgot to do one before I took it apart. The results ranged from 130 to 150 on cylinders 2 through 8 but #1 had 0. I took the rocker arms off of number 1 so both valves would stay closed and it built up 30 psi after cranking around 10 times.
There were a lot of other symtoms when I took the engine apart such as oil in the intake (blowby maybe?) but I was in denial.
Looks like it's rebuild time... !
Oh well,it could be worse.It could be a 3.8 car and you'd have to be doing a 5.0 swap.LOL.
Or... maybe I should do a 3.8 swap. I hear they make mad power if you bore it .600 over and stroke it to a 427 boiyz!
HAHAHA you wish!
no actually what everyone's forgetting is if you replace all 12 of the 3.8's narps with the 1.8 megawatt-lb variety you actually double the horsepower, and gas mileage. they are VERY hard to find, though, and usually cannot be had for less than $400 apiece.
:D
Oh yeah, I totally forgot to check my narps! Maybe the narps at #1 cylinder need to be machined... But I might just get some iridium coated titanium narps.