pardon my ignorance...but...couldnt you try the old lawnmower-trick? pull the plug, insert it back into the plug wire and hold the plug on/near the block, crank engine. If it sparks, you know what you got, right?
keeping in mind of course that an air fuel mixture will be blowing out of that hole at about 120 PSI and your going to be holding a spark plug Just sayin......
Slepe67 I was wondering after all the plug wire test posts when someone was going to tell him how to make sure the plug is fireing.And the one post ,never pull a plug wire off a running engine,WTF. and to keep from cylinder blow just screw another sparkplug in the hole.
He said the valves are moving, per an earlier post in this thread. Swapping the pushrods and rockers would likely make no difference. Hard to build pressure when you've got a 14mm hole open to the atmosphere. Plus on the intake stroke you're probably drawing mostly fresh air into the cylinder, and very little, if any combustible mixture. Keep in mind that there is a vacuum in the intake manifold when the engine is cranking, and the cylinder will draw air via the path of least resistance, which is that open plug hole rather than that intake valve with the manifold vacuum behind it. I've had a lot of connected spark plugs laying next to an open plug hole with an engine cranking, and have never had so much as a hint of combustion occur near it.