I got back onto the project. I pulled the heads and brought them to a machine shop. I looked at the cylinders and wiped them out, the honingOne was cracked in three spots around cylinder 3, the other in two spots. I bought new heads and had the machine shop install the valves, springs, etc. I reinstalled the new gaskets (head, exhaust, intake, etc), heads, etc. I started the truck and white smoke out came out the exhaust. I then checked the compression in each cylinder.

Cylinder # Pressure (psi)
1 155
3 105
5 150
7 153
2 145
4 145
6 151
8 150

Cylinder #3 is having issues. The others are within +/- 5 psi of one another. I'm going to take the valve cover off and see if anything is visibly wrong with cylinder #3. Does anyone have any thoughts to why cylinder #3 is having issues?

EDIT: I reinstalled all the spark plugs, but disconnected the fuel injector and spark plug wire to #3. The engine starts without white smoke. Does this indicate an issue with the block or something else?

 

White smoke usually means burning coolant/water. Blue smoke means burning oil

 

If it were coolant getting in there, it wouldn't really matter if the cylinder were firing or not, the exhaust manifold would be hot enough to boil it off right quick in any event. (white smoke) How long was the engine apart, and how was the humidity during that time? It's possible it was just condensation burning off???

 

I don't know about that, maybe the engine wasn't that hot?

 

The engine was apart for 2 weeks. I am in Chicago and the humidity is about 80-95% with temperatures in the 90s. When I connect the spark and fuel to #3, I get a lot of white smoke just like a smoke bomb, when I disconnect the fuel and spark to the cylinder I do not get white smoke. It also starts better without #3 connected to fuel and spark. However, #3 connected or not, it is consistently backfiring. I added 1mL of oil to cylinder #3 and the compression increased to 120, so the rings are bad as I already knew but that should not cause water burning. Does this sound like a need a short block and moving all the working parts over to the new block?

 

Did you get new heads, or simply reman heads?

Sounds like it needs to come back apart......

 

I started the engine and the smoke was immediate so the engine was not warmed up yet. I would also assume that the thermostat didn't have a chance to open up.

These are new heads that I had the machine shop add the valves and springs. I guess I'm taking the left side of the engine apart to see what is wrong. Of course, it's the more difficult side of the engine.

 

The only easy day was yesterday.

Murphy was an optimist.