I hooked my air compressor up to each cylinder when I got home from work. Seems #6 is ok, I can hear air leaking past the rings. Probably more than usual, but the engine hasn't been broken in yet, and the rings haven't had any drive time to seat, so that can be explained. And since I haven't had any combustion on that side of the engine since the rebuild, it hasn't seen the heat cycles the passenger side has seen.

However, I can hear air escaping through the intake on #4 and #2 cylinders. I have painters tape over the intake right now to keep debris out of the engine. The air escaping is enough to push up on the tape slightly, but not break the seal on the tape. I'm assuming ANY air escaping is a bad sign, so it looks like I'm going to have to replace the head. Bummer. I suppose when the new head gets here, I can borrow the intake cam off of it, and put it together enough to do a compression test to make sure, but I don't want to risk running the current head and burning up a valve. Looks like I'm in for some long hours ahead still.

In my haste to check for valve leaks, I did not check for any shorter valves with the cams still on the head. Perhaps I will throw the cams back in tomorrow night, and probe with some feeler gauges to see if it will show me any shorter valves, and by how much.


1995 Montero SR
2" Body Lift
35x12.50x15 Cooper Discoverer STT
Aisins