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Guys, I'm going to back off from the ledge and give the spark plugs a try. I should probably look at the engine mounts first though. I started it again last night, and it wasn't clunking and still seemed to rev ok. So I'll chance it.

Is there any way to tell if an engine mount is bad by just looking at it, or am I stuck trying to jack the motor up to see if it's torn? Should I try jacking up the motor with the mounts still bolted to the crossmember, or am I asking for trouble? Will I break an otherwise good engine mount if I do this?

I would just jack it up engine from each side and see which one goes up higher. It will flex probably close to two inches, anything more will not be good


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If its truly a rod knock, then it would make a very loud noise like some one beating on the block with a hammer. If you started it up and it didn't make noise than I don't think it's a rod knock. Rod knock doesn't come and go.

Also with a spun rod or main bearing you will get big metal flakes in your oil, have you drained your oil?

Problem solved. Sorry to sound the alarm. Solution?

LOOSE SPARK PLUG CABLE!!! Either that or the terminal connecting it to the coil. Can I tell you how much I HATE how these wires connect to the coil? Maybe it's a cheap brand of wires or something, but I'm used to getting a very positive CLICK when you connect the terminals. These DO NOT do that for me AT ALL. That's it. I'm getting the MSD coil, some Magnecor wires, and I already bought new spark plugs, so they're all getting swapped out.

SEE!!! glad you get to keep your engine.

Thank you all for your help. It is VERY much appreciated. I might still pick up that shortblock though.

Now I know why my oil smelled a bit like gas. I had a cylinder that wasn't burning all the gas and after I shut the engine off, it was leaking down into the crankcase. I JUST changed the oil 3 weeks ago, is it necessary for me to change it again? I used Mobil 1.

Absolutely. Change it. I knew you were running on three cylinders.

You called it.

The bulk of my experience with engines is with V8's. If you're down a cylinder in a V-8, no big deal. You might get a slight stumble at idle, but it won't shake, like this thing was shaking.

I feel relieved, but almost strangely disappointed in some weird way.

Its happened to me several times. I'm quite familiar with that symptom. Glad to hear your engine is fine.

Haha that's good to hear man. It's always the little things that are the biggest bitches. I love how you were expecting to spend a ton of money and then it started getting cheaper and cheaper. All to find out you didn't push something in all the way

The funny thing is I had already checked the spark plug cables before. I pulled out the ones on the coil and HATED how they do not click. I was fighting with the boots, pulling them back as far as I could to see if I would have enough cable to push into the female terminals before the boot would contact the coil, so that I could get a click that would show me they were in all the way. It NEVER did click, and I felt so frustrated. When I started it up again and it made no difference, I thought my engine was certainly toast. Like I said, I am now going to get the MSD coil and new Magnecor wires to go with it. I'm expecting that having male terminals coming out of the coil might work better for me. Truth be told, however, I didn't get much positive feedback from the spark plug terminals either.

My advice to you is try and be a little more open to checking things out a bit more, you were pretty convinced the motor was toast and not too willing to check the electrical side of it like we recommended. Most of the people on here know their stuff about these cars. Give us some trust

I do, and my apologies if I seemed to be unwilling to accept advice. I just could not fathom that spark plug wires could possibly be so problematic. In fact, I thought I had already ruled that out.