Judging from your pic,,,,the only cylinder that was truly sealing good was #2.
The exhaust valves have a nice color that shows good combustion.
Cylinder #4 definitely had a burnt valve in the pic.
The other exhaust valves have a coating like the intakes,,,,which usually shows as a sign that the cylinder is not firing hot enough to burn off the combustion residue,,,,,,usually from low cyl. pressure.
On another note,,
If one valve had made contact with a piston,,the same valve beside it should have hit as well,,,,,at least from a timing standpoint.


But,,,look at the bright side,,at least you tried to repair it yourself,,and even though you made a couple of mistakes,,sounds like you still did a good job.


Tommy

 

I adjusted the valves, went smooth after the first couple. Valve tap is gone. Been driving it around for a few days now with no problems. Now I think since I didn't adjust the valves on the last head that probably caused the problem, maybe number 4 was too tight. Live and learn. Thanks all for checking out my post and responding.

 

Update. Original poster. 4-8-16. The car has been a daily driver by one of my kids for the last year. It has always run poorly. These codes would pop up intermittantly:
P0700 Trans
P0301
P0303
P0300
P0780 Trans
P1399 (I think, from memory)

Recently P0505 (iacv) comes up also, and in park I get the hunting idle, reving up and down. The trans has shifted roughly. I cleaned up the IACV, no change. I plugged the throttle body and the car still ran.

I checked the intake bolts, they were all loose. Tightened up, no change. I changed the gasket, put a metallic felpro instead of the paper. I didnt take the plenum off, I only had 1-2 inches of play so it was hard to get the old gasket off.

That fixed it, it now runs and idles great. Trans shifts much smoother. So I had a large vacuum leak.



I just thought I'd post this because I always hate to read threads where the ultimate problem/solution is not revealed. Thanks all.

 

Thank you very much for that!