OK, Update.... first of all, thank you for all the follow-ups and it's not that I've been ignoring you, but I got nasty sick on Friday and was down for most of the weekend. I dragged my sniffling self to work this morning just 'cause I didn't really have a choice. Now I'm feeling better so it's time to get the ZR1 feeling better!
NOW... for the excitement... This morning I came downstairs after getting ready for work and the wife says "it smells like gasoline down here". Being stuffed up still, I took her word for it. Until I got to the back hall and sure enough that was gasoline I smelled. I opened the garage door and it was really strong. Looked around under the car and found no puddles. Had to go to work.
Came home tonight & I managed to get all the plugs out except for 8. I'll go back and search for all the tips on how to get at 8, but what was GM thinking there?!
I compared all the plugs and they appear original (almost 28k miles on the car). #5 looks very fouled.
I bumped the starter a few times and watched for water to burble out one of the cylinders. When it hit #5, a geyser shot from the engine to the garage wall... on the far side of a 3 car garage! And it was gasoline.
I made another revolution with the starter and got the same result with slightly less gasoline bursting out. I got little "poofs" out of the others.
So now I'm thinking it's probably NOT water in there, but unburned fuel making its way out the exhaust valves and burning/evaporating off the inside of the hot exhaust, and that was the smoke I was seeing. Wouldn't that say "bad injector" to you? In which case, isn't that a big relief vs. it being a head gasket?
Whadya think?