Did some more wrenching, maybe made some progress?
I pulled all the plugs and ran a compression test. All the odd cylinders have consistent compression and dry, toasty plugs. Evens, however, are wet and have varying (but still high-ish?) compression. #2 is the one the check engine light is telling me is misfiring. It's a wet, dirty plug with strong compression. #4 is the best plug on that side and still had good compression. #6 gave me the most trouble. I had a hard time lining up the tester threads on this hole, and I ran the test 3 times (removing and reinstalling the tester each time just to be sure it wasn't operator error) and got 3 different numbers for compression, and it seemed to build compression slower than the others. As you can see, the plug is also dirty. #8 had as good a compression as the other bank and built it fast but has a dirty plug.
180 to 160 is about a 12% difference. Most things I've heard say that 10-15% variance is generally ok. The fact that all of the evens are wet, even those with good compression, and that it gives a code for #2 makes me think the compression on #6 may not be the issue... but then again it might? Maybe somehow it's triggering the high fuel trim and that's that is making all the other plugs wet.
Not sure what the next step is besides test spark. I can get the test light style kind that plugs in between the wire and plug, but will that tell me if the spark is strong enough? I still have not pulled the distributor to look for stripped gears because I don't have a 2 way scanner to re-set the timing if I don't put it back exactly right. I don't think my blue driver will do it.
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