Mike C.

I posted a couple weeks ago about difficulty starting when warm. The car sat unstarted while I was away for 10 days. I started it tonight and was getting a very obvious miss at idle, stayed ragged when revved up. This lasted for maybe 2 minutes, then things smoothed out and it ran/idled normal. I did notice decidedly white smoke from the exhaust during this time and when I took it out for a subsequent drive (for the first 5 minutes or so). It ran fine, good power, etc. I pulled the plugs afterward and saw nothing obvious but I'm thinking head gasket. I have noticed a very slow drop in coolant level the past few months and no visible leaks. I'll rent a cooling system pressure tester this weekend and give a look. I also did a compression check after the first 2 minute run (throttle open, engine barely warm) and got around 170 on cyl 1 and 180-190 on 2 thru 4. Any other ideas?

Mike C.

Cooling system pressure test confirmed HG failure in cyl 4. Pulled it all apart and can see the #4 combustion chamber is much cleaner than the others... Any tricks to getting the cam tower off without making a big mess? It'll take a while for all that oil to burn off the exhaust manifold..