Thanks for the reply guys. Water.....hmmm.....usually with water, the smoke (steam) dissipates almost immediately, plus you can smell the sweet antifreeze aroma in the air. This smoke hangs around for a while and only smells like exhaust. However, the fact that it is white (whitish-gray) and the spark-plug appears to be oil fouled has kept me from thinking water. Mind you, water is next to #1, and there is no oil passage near #1.

As far as the assembly work, I did it. I do my own engines for two reasons....1/ I enjoy it, and 2/ if a mistake is made, I have only myself to blame and try to get on with fixing it and avoid waranty issues with someone else. Anyway, I doubt I made a gasket installation error, but it's possible.

the old joke......"I thought I made a mistake once, but it turned out I was in error"

Interestingly, I already changed the head gaskets on this enigine. When I first put it togehter, I accidently used Fel-pro "economy" head gaskets. I did get a water leak into....hmmm....either #2 or #3 cylinder...can't remember which. I don't remember a lot of smoke from that, however I do remember water in the oil and water leaking into the cylinder when it sat overnight. I used Fel-pro high performance gaskets when I did that repair.

I think once I get the intake off (and the only annoying part is draining the coolant....LOL), I'll hook the air hose to #1 and see if I can detect any air coming out around the headgasket (in the valley area). I've already done this with the engine together and the valve cover off, and couldn't detect any air around what you can see of the intake gasket.

Call me silly, but it bothers me that I have that slight compression loss in #1 compared to the others. It's a ridicuosly small difference, but it si a difference. So if it points to a small head gasket leak,.....then there's another issue.

Any moe pointers are appreciated, however once I get this resolved, I will post what I find in case others have the same problem, and to satisfy the curious.

Thanks again.