[ERA427]

Just to follow through here...

I was able to get my pinky finger into the spark plug hole enough to feel the bottom of the vavle and confirm that it was smooth all the way around. Also put a camera/scope in there to look for signs of damage to the piston. nothing.

So I packed the cylinder with rope to hold the valve up. I removed the old broken spring (broken in two places). I used the new spring compressor but soon realize that I could not get the new spring on without removing the rocker arm. So I took that off, put in the new spring, and then removed the rope. I then put the new pushrod in, and cranked the motor to confirm that the lifter was moving up and down (it was). Then i reinstalled the rocker arm, and cranked it again with the battery, while using a compression gauge. Everything checked out okay. So I reinstalled all the plug, hooked up the coil, crossed my fingers and let it fire up. It works! Thanks for all the advice. this is an amazing forum, and great to see that the members don't get into shaming other people who are not seasoned mechanics. I learned more than i intended to on this project and thankfully fixed it without having to remove the heads. And fixed it for $18 in parts, instead of having to pay $1,000s for someone to take it apart for me.

But I still may never know exactly what caused the spring to break and pushrod to bend. At minimum, I should probably fix my flaky tach (the needle jumps all around (stewart warner)