so I bought my first XJ about a month ago and everything seemed great, then after about 2 weeks it started to lag and was kinda sluggish under load almost as if it wasn't getting enough fuel, so I changed the filter, which happened to be slightly clogged. Next day I drive it to work and after about 15-20 minutes it started doing it again, then when I went to leave work it gave me a hard time starting, well I got it running after a couple minutes of dickering around with it. on my way home it struggled to get over 35 mph and hills were unbearable. when I finally get home I pop the hood open and immediately I notice the exhaust manifold is glowing red hot. I then just put a box fan under there to cool it down, and it hasn't started since. cranks but no start. Its a 95 4.0 with 174k miles on it. any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated. I will be doing a compression test tomorrow at work and will post the results of that. thanks again for your time and help.

 

How old is your catalytic converter?

 

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I'm gonna assume it's the factory cat, someone suggested it may be plugged so I went to cut it out and noticed the "post cat" 02 was no longer there, and after the cat was out I realized that someone had already hollowed it out previously

 

Conducted a compression test today with some very upsetting results, from front of the engine back towards the firewall these are the readings I got.
105
110
0
35
60
45

Put a boroscope down through the spark plug hole and the inside of the cylinders and top of the pistons look as if they were submerged under water for a period of time. Looks like I'm gonna need another motor l.

 

That all sounds horrible. It seems odd that so many cylinders are way off. All the fluids look ok?

 

Yeah the coolant is all clean, the oil is clean, no grainy feeling or anything but it does have a slight gas smell to it

 

What'd you do to it so far? General tune up?