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  #24   IP: 206.230.48.34
Old 03-25-2010, 10:18 AM
tenders tenders is offline
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Your symptoms sound to me like a blown head gasket between cylinders #1 and #2, or stuck valves in both cylinders. The cylinder adjacency strongly suggests head gasket to me.

Older styles of paper head gaskets (post-asbestos, pre-graphite) are very susceptible to failure, and with an engine that's new to you I'd want to make sure that your gasket is one of the modern, dark grey graphite ones that will hold through thick and thin rather than one of the paper gaskets, which are either green or manila brown in color and are a ticking time bomb.

Your work so far has been good, you've ruled out a lot of stuff and haven't made the problem worse, so the changes you've made will all be for the better once you get this figured out. Once you get the compression tool and confirm no compression in those cylinders, I see little risk to pulling the head, checking out the valve situation, and replacing the gasket with a modern Moyer gasket. There's a lot on this site describing the procedure, but assuming the nuts come off the studs relatively easily, it's an afternoon's job even if you've never done it before.