I've been hearing what I thought was a leaky header seal so I thought I'd check it out today. Come to find out it's not the headers at all... Whenever I step on the throttle while my engine is idling or when I'm driving, I hear a loud popping or *brrraaapp!!* noise comming up out of the throttle bodies (xfire). Almost as if the exhaust was comming up partially thru the intake. It actually sounds more like a ticking when inside the cockpit driving down the road. I thought maybe the timing was up too high (had it around16 degrees), so I turned it down to about 8-10 degrees. Then I got a flame to shoot out of the throttle body and it ran like crap. What's goin' on here guys? any ideas?

 

A compression test might tell you a lot about that.
Something similar happened with one of my engines once. It was a bent intake valve, in that case. Could be a busted valve spring too.
Just a couple ideas.

 

Check for carbon tracking and such in the dist cap first. Maybe even just put on a new cap & rotor if you haven't for a while.

If it still does it, do the compression test. Listen closely to the intake manifold and the exhaust manifolds as you do it.

If one cyl is way low and you hear "fffffft" in the intake, it's a burnt intake valve, broken spring, etc.; causing the intake valve not to seal.

If #5 & #7 are both low, and you hear "ffffft" in the intake, the head gasket is bad between those 2 cyls.

Etc.

Do those things, post your results.

 

Thanks for the radvice! If I removed the valve covers, would I be able to tell if a valve spring is busted by visual inspection? I'm gonna do a compression test asap. Should I not drive the car in the mean time?

 

A comp test will tell you which of the cyls is the culprit. Then you can inspect the VSs on that cyl.
There's a good chance that it might be the head gasket too, as RB mentioned.
I drove my car in that condition for a while b4 I figured it out, and it didn't do any further damage. I don't want to tell you you should do it tho.