Hi, everyone. First post here, long time lurker.
My 74 Dodge started making some horrible noises about 5 months ago, and I thought I had spun a rod bearing. Two weeks prior, replaced the flywheel and clutch, and installed a pilot bearing (there wasn't one???). After teardown.... Pretty sure what happened was I sheared an engine mount, and the other one was missing the nut to hold it in place :/ This thing sad for 13 years before I got it, it's been a work in progress. A year ago I fit an edelbrock intake and 4 barrel to it, which made a world of difference. During the tear down, I scrapped the old headers and went with a cheap pair of Hedmans.
So, engine already torn down, time to replace all relevant parts. All bearings, (pistons looked fine) new rings, lapped the valves by hand, did minimal 'porting' (removed the worst of the casting blemishes). Assembled engine, cam indicator at 6, crank at 12, 1st cylinder TDC. Spent 100 hours hunting down electric gremlins, wasted S*&t tons of money replacing the ICU, ICU plug, ballast resistor, dist, etc.... :/ Completely bypassed my wirewall connections and wired to a brand new ignition. Got my cranking voltage to at least 10 (from like, 6). Spark indicator shows voltage to the plugs, but.... I'm only showing 60 PSI compression when cranking.
Beat my head around, realized my leakdown test was lying; I had a one way check valve in the hose I was using... So, realizing my stupidity and doing it again properly... it blows air out of the other three cylinders on that bank. Realize my more stupidity; I used RTV on the head gaskets. Minimally, but.... F me. Take it apart, scrape, clean, new gaskets. TDC, timing on point... 60 PSI cranking. I was a mechanical engineer dropout long ago, and fancy thinking I understand what's going on, but this has me completely tossed.
Adding air to #1 at TDC does not leak past valves, but does past rings. WHY!??!? I'm seriously at the end of my abilities here, it seems. Any wisdom, whomever helps solve this, will become my new messiah.
