I have had a real hard time figuring this one out and am hoping someone from here can give me more insight into what may be happening.
Here's the backstory: 2013 Silverado with 5.3 came in with cylinder 7 misfire. After several tests it was determined there was something wrong with the valve train and the lifters were replaced on that bank. Fast forward to this week. After putting the truck back together it runs nice and smooth until about 9 seconds then it has a dead miss on cylinder 7. If i take a standard compression test it is fine (~180psi). If I do a running compression test the compression drops to 0 in about 9 seconds. Once the compression drops to zero if I immediately turn the engine over the compression returns. The compression never drops while doing a standard compression test no matter how many times I let it crank over. One other aspect that was changed was when the VLOM was off plugs were pressed into the engine AFM towers to essentially delete them. In my opinion I think the cylinder 7 intake valve is staying closed, I need to run it with the valve cover off to test this.
You can't run the tower plugs while you have AFM lifters. When you do this any oil pressure that comes from the main oil galley below the lifters and goes around them ends up pressurizing that tower. That's why when I do the VLOM mod I remove the gasket above the oil tower. This ensures that it can never be pressurized. Now you either have to find a way to remove those plugs or just finish the full delete and replace all the AFM components with non-AFM components.