I just bought a beautiful mess... care to express an opinion?

[aneal000]

So forgive me, but I've never dug very deep into a motor before so a lot of questions keep popping up in my head. Today I plan on pulling the oil filter and checking for metal. I don't have a boroscope but don't mind picking one up to see. If those two things check out and I need to dig into the valves (after reading the engine teardown on 101 projects) it looks like this can be done in the car but some special tools are needed (the camshaft holding tool). The part I don't fully understand, is, can you pull the camshaft assembly out (all together) to presumably access a valve spring and then put it back together? Are there "timing" issues I need to be aware of or would have to deal with? I have seen a lot of threads about needing the $800 tool to properly set timing. I need to figure out what point it just makes more sense to buy a $3k ebay motor...

Thanks for the great information!

[Ian c]

A compression test will tell you if a cylinder isn't working properly .
An air-leak test will tell you if it's block-side or head-side .
After a quick boroscope to look for obvious piston-top/cylinder damage , that's where I'd head next ....