Always go with your gut....

I really didn't want to tear the engine apart of a car I just bought no matter how much I liked the car. That's what made me look everywhere else except compression.

I'm not sure if I would do anything different if I could do it over again. Typically, a misfire doesn't come from a blown head gasket. It can, but there are usually other symptoms involved. I.e., loss of coolent, blue smoke, oil in coolent, rough running at all RPM's, etc. So, this one had me stumped. With that said, had I performed the compression test right away, I would have known something was wrong in the cylinder and not gone through the trouble of other tests.

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cmelkoni
2003 X5 3.0i, manual