Update 12/10/21 - she's down for count.... Again!
As of 9 pm last night, this is the current status of the ol' Tahoe:
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With only 931 miles on the engine, Tuesday night she suddenly lost power, developed a knock, started missing, and blowing a ton of smoke out the exhaust. The smoke was white, unburned fuel. I was hoping it was just a failed injector. By cracking one line at a time with the engine running, I narrowed the problem down to cylinder 4. Naturally, the cylinder with the problem is the hardest one to access, right behind the turbo.
Video of engine knocking and missing.
I ended up removing the turbo to gain better access to the cylinder. I pulled the injector, but there was nothing visibly wrong. I swapped in one of my original injectors, but there was no change. I then had my son crank the engine over with the glow plug removed (and the fuel system deactivated so it wouldn't start), and that's when I realized there is no compression on cylinder 4! I can keep my thumb over the glow plug hole with the engine cranking over, and can only feel a slight puff.
I removed the valve cover to make sure everything was okay in the valve train, thinking there might be a valve stuck open, a bent pushrod, or something of that sort, but everything is normal in the valve train.
So after 4 months and thousands of dollars, I'm essentially right back where I started. I still need to swap out the torque converter, so it looks like pulling the engine (again) is in my future.
I'm nearly sick to my stomach at this point and really discouraged. I can't imagine what went wrong, or what I missed. I did everything by the book to the best of my ability.
Casey