It has been a while since I posted on this topic. I have since put about 550 miles on this motor since the refresh and the noise has been and remains there. The engine has great oil pressure, doesn't smoke and was very powerful and responsive so I was very surprised with what I saw when I did some diagnostics this last weekend.

I don't know why I never did this test until now, but regardless I did a compression test on Saturday. Not sure if it was because the engine was cooling off but I got some strange numbers. I did the test with all the plugs out but forgot to open the butterfly on the carb, not sure how much that changes things. On the drivers side bank, the cylinders were all around 155 PSI, however on the passenger side, the numbers were higher, all around 190 PSI except for #8 which was zero!!! All of the other plugs looked good, light cocoa color except for number 8 that was still brand new and shiny.

So for 550 miles I have been running on 7 cylinders, I still cant believe how well it ran like this, but with the 484 cam, I just thought the rough idle was how it was supposed to be.


I am at a loss as to what this could be, seems like it was like this from first fire. Time to pull off a valve cover, do a leak down test after I visually inspect everything. I recall everything looking normal when I last checked it, meaning the pushrods going up and down, etc but who knows for sure.

What is ironic is someone posted back in 2015 that they heard a miss in the one of the videos I posted. Very good, it certainly did have one!