my friend who is much better than i with cars is telling me that im running on only seven out of eight cylenders. How do i prove him wrong (hopefully)??????

 

Huh? Is your friend being serious or just trying to insult your car? If he came to that conclusion, either he already knows what the problem is, or else he's talking out his ***. Meaning, if the car is really running on 7 cylinders, he would have had to look under the hood and investigate to know this. If you are only running on 7 cylinders, then the problem is most likely in the ignition. Check to make sure that the distributor cap, plug wires, and spark plugs are all in good condition. The ignition is usually the cause for having one cylinder out, unless you have intertnal engine damage, like a burned valve (which is probably not the problem). If you are running on 7, the car will idle rough, kinda shaky, and it will be a real dog, sluggish accelleration. If you have a burned or cracked plug wire that is grounding out, you can sometimes hear it really faintly. It makes a slight ticking noise. It's possible that your friend is hearing this.

 

easy way to tell (but puters compensate for this any more) is to pull a plug ire and see if the preformance changes. repete till you pull a wire that doesn't change the preformance. another method is to mark each exhaust port on the manifold with a crayon (cold engine) and start it up, they all should melt and run more or less at the same time. if you have a dead cylinder you won't have any heat and the mark won't melt.

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ICON Motorsports
1st & 3rd

 

if it idles bad and if you floor it and it stumbles around you're probably missing a cylinder (I know, I forgot to plug a wire back in a few weeks ago )

 

When I was running on 7 cylinders (wire unplugged), I didn't really notice a huge difference. Yeah the car was somewhat slower, I noticed I couldn't spin the tires, but it didnt stumble around too much, and still had decent power. I did notice that the tach was bouncing around a little bit though.

 

i had this problem once but i was down two cylinders. i lost alot of power and my exhaust smelled like gas. it ended up my headers burnt though 2 wires and after i replaced them all it was gettin a new car again it was fun but yeah i agree with everyone just go through and check you ignition

 

I had an old plug wire short out on the O2 sensor body, and yeah, it was real obvious when one cylinder cut out. The engine was vibrating a LOT more, you could hear it in the exhaust, and there was a noticible drop in power. If you're running on 7, it should be pretty obvious. A new set of Taylor spiro-pros solved my problem, and they even fit in the OEM looms, snugly.
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I have a collapsed lifter. It was banging pretty hard so I adjusted it down tell it stopped banging. yeah the performance is down a lot but it will last a little while until the 383 is built.