Forgive me my Mopar brothers. I have sinned

MileHighDart said
Thanks for the idea, I never would have thought of that. Actually would be good if it was an exhaust valve, maybe i could just get away with having the heads rebuilt for now. I'll try to give that a try tomorrow.

That's what I did with Gladys. She had a dead skip when Kitty and I went to look at her. I drove her and I looked at Kitty and said "it's got a dead skip". Remarkably, it still ran well. We got back to the guy's house and I raised the hood. muh huh. 7 yellow wires and one grey one. Somebody was chasin the skip. So I looked a tthe guy and I said "how you answer this one question will depend on whether I buy or not". I asked him "Is it a hole in a piston or burned valve?" He shifted around for a couple seconds and said "burned valve". I said "ok, since you were honest, I want the truck." I gave him 100 less than his asking price and we drive it about 60 miles back home. I did a compression test and #5 failed. I put air in it and out the pipe it came.

I put a set of reman heads on it from Allied Cylinder head and have been driving her ever since. That's been about eight years ago and she runs really good. What someone did in this case was rebuild the short block and put the heads back on it. It had a very fresh short block. .030 over with very fresh cross hatch.

If it has a burned valve (very likely) I would rebuild the heads on it and let her rip. I can give you some tips if you want to PM me on those FE heads. They are made a bit different than some and a couple of old school tips come in handy.