EGT's in my sbf

Ok I have been having problems in my t bucket lately. I had two cylinders that were popping so I pulled all the plugs. Number 4 & 5 were both wet so I cleaned the plugs, checked the wires etc could not find any problems. I washed the hot rod up and went for a spin. It ran so-so but severely down on power and would still pop occasionally. I got back from my test run and pulled the dist. cap off to find out I got a bunch of water in there when I washed it. I let everything dry out for a couple days, changed all the plugs with new NGK 7's (same as the old ones but I opened the gap up to .045 from .030). I also changed out the Ford Racing spark plug wires with some new Taylor 8mm I had. Fired the car tonight and it idles ok but still sounds like it is missing a bit on 1 cylinder. I am going to let it cool down and tomorrow I am going to pull the plugs again and see what I can find. I have a infrared laser temp gauge and I tried to read the header temps only to find out that it only goes to 425F (oops). Limited with my temp gauge I moved about 1' from the head and measured the temps and #4 cyl is still off the charts compared to the other cylinders.

All I can think of now is to check the plugs again, I can change the cap to see of that could be the problem, I will check the valve lash tomorrow as well. Is there a reasonably affordable temp laser I can buy to that will go high enough to check my exhaust temps right out the cyl head?

Clues I have are that the head coating is discolored on the whole #4 tube, at the bend on #2 tube as well as the #7 and #8 cyl. (see pics)


The motor is a Bennet 382 windsor, TFS high ports, MSD dist, 6 AL and coil.

The pics are from before I changed the plugs and cleaned the cap. Yes those are my freshly 3 attempt, 3 month coated Nitro plate headers.