So after some more testing, I found I have a leaking exhaust valve in cylinder 2. A couple of club members told me I definitely have a miss, so I did another compression check. I guess I must not have done another one after I replaced the head gasket. All cylinders were in the 170-180 psi range, except for cylinder 2. It was down around 105-110. After adding a little oil to the cylinder, the compression did go up to 115 or so, but that was about it.

I don’t have a proper leak-down tester, but I connected an air compressor set at 90 psi straight to cylinder 2 using the hose from the compression tester. You do need to make sure to remove the hose’s valve core or else it doesn’t do much good. :p The piston was at TDC on the compression stroke so that the valves were closed, and I did retry it later with the rockers off just to double-check it. The air just flowed out the exhaust in a very noticeable amount.

Since I have a spare head that was supposedly rebuilt 2k miles ago, I’m just going to try swapping that on. I’ll need to swap the valve springs over too. I just ordered some new head bolts so that I know those are good, and I’ll try to remember to pick up some washers as well. I also ordered a full engine gasket set—it wasn’t much more expensive than a head gasket set, and I’m sure I’ll need some of the extras at some point. Hopefully this fixes it…