Ok, so I tore into it today. When I removed the head I was shocked . . no burned valve. So Mark, I do have a couple examples of what a burned valve looks like.
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So then I was scared . . . . I didn't want to look at the piston. When I was away this weekend, I borrowed a compression tester and saw I had basically no compression on #3; why I thought I had a burned valve. I had 30# of pressure which quickly went to zero in #3. So if the valve wasn't burned, I figured detonation must have broken the head of the piston. But again, nope! Piston looked fine with no signs of detonation damage ( of course it detonates, it's a 2.3 Ford engine ). But the piston top was very clean compared to the other 3 pistons. That is usually a sign of water getting into the combustion chamber.
The ring on the head gasket didn't look compromised, but it must have been. That could explain the low/no compression and the clean top of the piston. The other interesting fact of this "mystery" is that both plugs for cylinder #3 were damaged. These plugs were less than 2 weeks old and about 250 miles on them. One center electrode had burned completely away. You couldn't recognize it at all. The other plug ( dual plug head ) had started to burn away the center electrode. Other 3 cylinders the plugs looked new. And the plugs that were removed from that cylinder 2 weeks earlier looked decent, considering they were 84K miles old. So trying to figure what may have happened here. It's possible I had an injector that was partially clogged and making the mixture very lean. This could have burned away the electrode. This also could attribute to detonation in that cylinder. Or, perhaps I had a head gasket fail and that water vapor created havoc in the cylinder ( although many times some water is a deterrent to detonation ). I'm not totally sure here, it's a head scratcher. So the head is getting rebuilt. Valve job on all 8 valves. new seals, milled, cam bearings etc. The camshaft looks great ( roller followers ). It's a good time to replace a lot of things on the engine. I ordered a fresh set of injectors.The timing belt has 60K on it along with the water pump, so I have to replace those items. The oil pressure switch is original, etc. Time for a mini rebuild you might say. If any of you have had a similar condition with your 2.3, shoot some ideas of what you think might have happened here that caused the end results. I was hoping for a bad valve and not hoping for a damaged piston. It looks like I have neither . . just so head scratching