Alright, I'm confused. The car was running fine. You could jump on the throttle and it would respond immediately and wouldn't break up at all. THEN.. we had some impulse to change the plugs. It all went downhill from there. It drove fine, but when you went to give it a reasonable amount of throttle, it would misfire like crazy.

It wasn't until I got a squirt bottle of water and sprayed the headers and found cylinder #2 wasn't even firing. 3 different plugs and cables later, the header's still cold. The plugs foul up immediately, and nothing happens.

Any ideas? they would be greatly appreciated. And also, we took off the valve cover and disconnected the power to the distributor and cranked it for a few seconds and all of the pushrods EXCEPT for cylinder #2's rotate. Is that a collapsed lifter?

thanks for the help.

 

By "rotate", do you mean the rocker arms aren't rocking (no lift)? Both intake and exhaust, or just one? If a valve isn't opening, you get no fire in the cylinder. Weird that it was after the plug change though, but that would just be a coincidence. Could be a lifter, could also be a wiped cam lobe. If you rotate the engine, watch for the pushrod to go up and down. Assist it by hand if you need to. Even if the lifter was collapsed, you would still have up and down movement, as long as the cam lobe is fine.

 

By rotate, I meant the pushrods themselves turn in their channels. I figured that was supposed to help lubricate them? and the rockers definitely move. I'm not if they are moving enough. I know that revving the heck out of the engine as soon as yo start it can collapse lifters, so I've always made sure not to do that.

We are looking pretty hard for a new engine, preferably a decent condition 350 to work on, cause now were not sure if its a 327 OR 307. Of course the engine would be the one with a casting ID that can be used interchangeably.

 

The pushrods can rotate, along with the lifters, but that would be happening as the engine is running. If the lifters are working while just cranking, then your cam is ok. You could have a collapsed lifter, but considering the timing of when the problem started, you might want to look at your wires to make sure they aren't crossed. Or possibly a clip got torn away from the wire end? What kind of spark plugs are you using?

 

A very simple check would be to remove the plug wire to #2 and swap it over to #1 on both ends. Then take #1 wire and move it to #2 location on both ends (plug and cap). If the problem moves to #1 after the swap, then you've got a broken plug wire. Easily done when pulling them off to change plugs.

 

Well, to start off with the wires, I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with that. At this point, we have 3 different sets which means plenty of spares to swap out. I've tried 3 different wires from 3 different sets, and checked continuity on all of them. We even took out the plug and ran the engine for a few seconds to see if there was something wrong with the distributor, but the spark looked pretty strong.

And with the plugs, the originals were Champion, we went to Napa and got Autolites cause thats all they had and Autozone didn't carry 45s. We originally just blamed the Ford plugs, but even when we switched back to the champions, they didn't work. So, we bought some ACDelco's just for the heck of it (I know this seems redundant and unnecessary, but we didn't even know that the problem was #2 until I had changed out 2 sets) Oh, and I used an OEM gap checker on all the plugs, put that plug grease in all the boots, and made sure they were snapped all the way on. And yes, after I found the problem, I only changed the #2 plug from that point on.

So all that taken into account, any other ideas? thanks.

 

Time to run a compression check. You need to see if the cylinder is building pressure. If it isn't you could have a stuck valve, lifter, etc.

 

Well, I just took out all the plugs and did a compression check yesterday. All cylinders were right around 130-140 psi, which completely confuses me. now what? my dad thinks all the oil might be from a bad piston ring?

 

That's fairly decent compression, and well within specs of each other. When you say "all the oil" are you referring to the fouling you mentioned in the first post? And only the one plug? What does the plug look like, dripping with oil or caked with black gunk? Your oil ring could be bad, but unless you're pouring oil up into the chamber, I would still expect you to have fire in that cylinder. Run the engine with your timing light connected to the #2 wire and see if you have good spark before you start assuming it's an internal problem.

 

Yeah, I should have been more specific. The plug isn't caked, just pretty well coated compared to the others, which gave me the impression that nothing was being burned off if there was an oil leak. But I'll definitely try the timing light on the cylinder. That would clear up any questions about weather or not it's an electrical issue.