Mike, I'm going to make you feel like a genius. I along with many mechanic friends ASSumed that I had burnt valves on a dodge 318 engine. On the gravel drive,,, I mean the hi tech shop, I crawled up in the engine area and removed both heads. I'd never done anything like that before. It was a 4x4 so I did climb as mentioned, didn't have hardly any tools and very little knowledge of what I was doing. I forget the price of having the heads worked but along with a lack of tools, shop, knowledge, garage floor I also had a lack of money. I'd still like to thank all of the mechanic friends who always knew exactly what they were talking about, never ever just "didn't know".
Turns out the distributor cap was cracked.
. But I did learn a lesson.