I hear ya. I mentioned above at the end of my lengthy post that perhaps the previous owner encountered the stuck boots and skipped replacing those two plugs. I'll never know. However, I did run my borescope down each cylinder to have a peak. Piston tops looked rather clean (we ran some seafoam through the fuel earlier. There was a bit of carbon on them but we could easily see valve notches, markings on the pistons, and, on #2 & #3 the intake and exhaust valves (articulating borescope). All looked OK. With 2&3 near BDC, the cylinder walls (what I could see), looked typical for a high mileage engine. I did a dry compression test and all were above 150 PSI (some higher). (FSM says 119 psi is the min). Bear in mind the compression test was on a cold engine. It does have 154K so I didn't expect perfection. I'll likely repeat the compression test on a warm engine (dry and wet) but that may have to wait a bit.

I agree that seeing them in this condition was quite, eh...um... unexpected. While horribly eroded, they're not black, or wet or covered in deposits. It's amazing it ran as well as it did. He ran around a bit yesterday and put nearly 40 miles on it with no issues. He's headed out to his gf's this weekend. That's a 150mile roundtrip. I'll likely pull the plugs and redo the comp test when he gets back.

 

Aw.. now you're making me blush.....

But to your point, I am a DIY'er. While I have some decent hand tools (metric, imperial, and even a few Whitworth) and some "specialized" auto tools (brakes, AC) I am still limited in what I can do. The tools I have, I have amassed over many years and in many cases, bought when a particular job called for it. Even so, as cars get more sophisticated and computerized, so too does the diagnostic equipment. I can diagnose just about any issue on my 1988 Jeep Cherokee with just a multimeter and repair just about anything with basic hand tools (OK maybe not quite anything). My point here is that, at some point, the issue will exceed my ability to correct it or just cost far more than it's worth. At that time, we'll have to decide to send it to a Pro, or give it up. This has happened with a few prior vehicles.

 

Yeah, both of my sons do not share the same penchant for things mechanical as I do. They do help out when I work on their cars and I'm getting them to the point where they do the routine stuff it and I help. The end game is to simply get them to do it without me.