I've been told by my grandfather, who used to own the f-100 (360 cid engine) I now have in my possesion, that the engine has a burned out cylinder.
What does he mean by burned out? What would cause this?
Is there a way to check if I do, and how would I tell which cylinder is?
What would I have to do to repair it?

 

I suppose technically there is no such thing as a burned out cylinder. There could be a cylinder that's not putting out nearly as much power as the rest, though (or zero power). To determine which cylinder it is, you could start with the ignition wires. Start the engine and short out ignition to a given cylinder (or pull one wire at a time, but watch what you're touching when you do that, ok?) and if indeed you've got a bum cylinder, the rpm drop won't be as great when you disable ignition to that cyl. as it will be for the others.

Once you've identified which cylinder is suspect, you can do a compression test. To spare you a monsterously long note, I'll not give the details on the exact procedures, but essentially, you check the cranking compression on that cylinder and then dump a couple of tablespoons of SAE 30 oil in the cylinder and check compression again. If the second reading is much higher than the first, you've got a ring problem or a problem with scoring of the cylinder wall and if the first and second compression readings are pretty close, you've got a problem with the valves (ex: burned valves, bent valves, valve seat issues, etc.). If it's the valves, you simply remove the cylinder head and go from there. If it's the rings/cylinder, things rapidly get much more involved.

 

dead pistons ain't bad unless you got 2 of'em then the power loss starts to show. I wouldn't worry bout it unless it's a busted piston ring, those can cause some damage.

 

i have a 1975 f150 with a 360 im assuming the valves out of it, it only runs on 6 and a half on idle and 7 when reved up, i put new plugs and plug wires in it and points so my guess is the valves are going out of it, it can still burn the tires off so ill run it till i find a 390 and put in it

1975 f150 360