Ok so long story short, I recently bought a 87 pickup and the block recently froze. Seems the previous owner put water in it and I haven't flushed it yet.
So I'm driving to work in a huge hurry and noticing the truck is running funny and that the engine temp is coming up but the heat is still blowing cold (it was about 25deg that day). Half way to work a hose blows off and puts me in the middle of a cloud of steam. I let the motor cool a little and drove the rest of the way to work. It ran fine with no antifreeze but got a little warmer than normal. I put the hose back on and filled it with antifreeze.
On the drive home It had next to no power. I didn't even take the freeway cause it wouldn't go that fast. It idles just fine but under a load it feels, and sounds like it's running on two cylinders.
I think it might be fuel starved. But I really don't know what it could be. Does anyone have any experience here? Any suggestions?

 

you sure you didnt heat it up to the point of frying the rings? Doesn't take that long to heat up an engine without coolant in it. and without coolant the temp gauge is useless.

 

maybe blown HG too, check ur oil n see if shes all milky sry bout ur luck post some pics of ur truck, looks like you cut the front fenders or P.O did it but looks pretty sweet,

 

ditto on the chocolate milk looking oil. You also probably needed a new thermostat as well initially, that may have been sticking. I think there's about a 50/50 chance you toasted the head gasket / warped your heads. I say its time for a compression and cylinder leakage test.

 

The oil is clean and coolant free.
The hose that blew off was one of the smaller ones on the passenger side of the motor. When it blew off it dumped all the hot coolant on my fuel filter, point blank. I changed the fuel filter the next day. I loosened the OUT side of the fuel filter first and it burst with fuel as if it were under pressure. Is this normal?

 

So I finally got the new fuel filter on at about 3am last night. I can't believe it! It fixed about 90% of my problem. It has most of it's power back but still has a cylinder that isn't firing. Should be an easy fix.
Could the block heating up like that cause a fouled plug?