Burnt valve?

[scesnick]

I have a 1977 case 480 Construction King and I recently went out to plow my road. I finally got it started, it was very cold outside, and it started popping. I then ran it again this week and the popping all of the sudden got extremely loud ! It still seems to run fine, although i didn't run it long like this.
I'm not all that knowledgeable with diesel motors. Hopefully it is not what I think it is.
If it is burnt valve what is the ball park figure this is gonna cost me??? thanks... /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[MMM]

If it is accompanied with rough idle, I normally loosen inj lines one at a time to find which cylinder doesn't affect performance. Once that is found, try swapping inj with another cyl and repeat test If problem moves to another cyl, it's inj, If it remains in same cyl, I'd suspect valve. Still I would look closely at valve train of affected cyl and check lash before taking off head. There have been a bunch of heads removed for no reason.

 

[scesnick]

MMM,

It seems to idle fine. It just pops very loud. It was pretty loud and then all of the sudden the popping got extremeley loud.
It does not seem to effect the performance of the hoe much if any. Hopefully it is the injectors but how can i check if the idle is normal?