when I first start the car and give it gas a little the idle will stay at 1500 rpm gradually moving down over the course of 5-10 minutes, after a while when it gets to 1000 i start driving and when i drive it for a bit the idle gets to 800-900 and everything is good? is this high idle start normal? btw i have no emmisions, no cat. oh whats a good way to check the compression of the motor with parts that i can just get at autozone?

 

Yes, it's supposed to do that. It's the cold start idle that is regulated by the thermowax on the throttle body. ~3k RPM for 17 seconds (BAC and AWS solenoid actually control this), then 1.5K RPM, and 750 RPM when fully warm.