Pop Goes the FX

OK, over the past week had been working bit by bit on the rally FX. After the last event, I managed to limp home with the leaking manifold. I thought it was running so rough because the leaking manifold was allowing air into the system causing the O2 sensor to read wrong and run rich. I replaced the gaskets and studs and nuts I’d lost and tightened down. It wasn’t as loud, but still ran lousy. I swaped over belt idler so I could completely delete the A/C compressor, and in the process reset the distrbutor and timing. Also verified spark signal at each sparkplug wire. It still ran wonky. I saw crud was being spit out the exhaust and I was begining to worry. I looked at the radiator fluid and the oil, though a little low, they both looked fine and clear. Odd. I replaced the O2 sensor, still ran bad. I started unplugging the spark plugs wires. Uh oh, unplugged #3 and there was no change in engine idle, looks like cylinder 3 is not firing for some reason. Hmmm, unplugging #2 also showed no change in how badly the engine was running. What’s going on here? Maybe injector problem? I’d have to look up which banks fire together, this was a possibility. I pulled the spark plugs and 2 & 3 were covered in black, none of the white/gray combustion color.  Finally I pulled out compression tester and it revealed extremely low compression on cylinders 2 and three. Ah damn, looks like a blown headgasket after all. Looks like I’m tearing things apart and doing a head rebuild. Wasn’t quite planning on this so soon, but looks like I’m going to be doing a bunch of work on it now!