Is it running like poop? I’m curious why you did a Leakdown?

 

It runs fine actually. I did a leakdown to see how the motor was breaking in and because that was the problem that started the entire rebuild process in the first place. I wanted the peace of mind that things were going well.

 

+1
Also heads twist if removed incorrectly

 

With 75% leakdown, one would think there would be severe misfire going on. A blown head gasket between #2 and #3 with 75% leakdown would show massive bubbles coming out of the radiator neck... something is not adding up. Perhaps we need more infornation.

 

during the leakdown the air was flying out of the dipstick hole, not out of the adjacent spark plug hole... that’s what leads me to believe rings.

but now that you mention it, I checked and do have a bit of coolant loss in the rad...

 

After thinking through this a little.... if it is a headgasket blown... is it possible during the leakdown test that the air would escape through the dipstick hole instead of the adjacent spark plug hole?

 

Head was built and installed at Inline too?

 

Air would escape thru the cooling system before reaching an adjacent spark plug hole.

How is the car running?

 

Yup, symptoms sound like rings. May be out of tolerance range. Or improperly seated. Prolly going to need Inline Pro pull the head & pistons and check.

 

The car runs fairly normal. It struggles to start a little more than normal but I attribute that to the fouled plugs. Other than that, for now, you couldn’t really tell anything is wrong. The oil looks normal, not milky, same with the coolant, it looks normal. No CELs. It does seem to idle a hair rougher than normal now... which I also attributed to the plugs but maybe I’m wrong?

now, there is only a couple hundred miles on the build so maybe not enough time to actually contaminate either way.

And yes, everything assembled at inline pro.