That is what I am thinking. The thing is, and feel free to correct my ignorance, if you replace the head gasket,
are you not supposed to re-surface the head? And if I am doing that, the odds are pretty good I am goign to want to do rings at the least and the odds are good that the cylinders need to be honed or bored. And at that point, I may as well do the entire motor? Or am I being dramatic, and can I just plop a new gasket in and buy some more engine life until the time comes to do the full re-build?
Sounds like at a bare minimum a head gasket. You might get a little compression bump putting a plug in the other cylinder but, depending on valve opening, it may or may not help at all. At the point you are at, I don't know if I would bother checking that though. At a bare minimum, you need to replace the head gasket.
