Could I be floating my valves?

[silver_pilate]

Yeah, check for a header leak.

I had a BAD exhaust leak a while back after I put my BBK's on. They matched up fine to the heads, but the last bolt on the number four cylinder backed out after a couple hundred miles and I was never able to get a wrench on it to tighten it down good enough (that's why I now thank God for GearWrenches...they work awesome on hard to reach places). It got progressively worse and was audible all the time as a loud clicking sound.

When I pulled the headers to swap in some metal core gaskets to replace the paper ones, I found out that the entire number four primary seal on the gasket had blown out making one humongous exhaust leak. After the gasket swap, my car felt like a new beast and picked up a ton of power.

Give it a listen and see what you hear...it doesn't take long for a paper gasket to blow out with a loose header bolt.

--nathan