[audioman81]

I bought an 88t last fall and havent driven it much yet, maybe 1000 miles at most. it seems to have quite a bit of power and havent found any problems yet.
here is a list of mods it came with.
3" exhaust
fluidyne radiator
K&N filter
turbo timer
I custom made a 3" id turbo elbow
over the winter I did a compression check as well as replaced the spark plugs.
My results were pretty low, between 105 and 128 on the cylinders.
I didnt try oil in the cylinder, but plan on doing another compression check this week now that i can get the car out and warm it up first.
the car doesnt seem to lack any power, but maybe thats just me.
also over the winter i pulled the stock ct26 and it seems in great shape, almost no shaft play and none at all back and forth. the car has 89k miles on it and had a hg done by the original owner.
I am the 3rd owner and the 2nd owner only had it for 6 months or so and didnt ask much about the car when they bought it from the first owner so i dont know what they did or didnt do to the engine. all i know is that the camgear cover has a sticker on it that says the hg was changed at 58k miles.
I dont know if its metal or not or if the pistons or anything is aftermarket either.
I thought maybe my compression was low might be because they put a big metal gasket on and didnt do any machining. but thats just a long shot guess.
is there anything i can do to find out without causing myself to have to rebuild due to pulling the head and looking?
I would like to run more than stock boost, but want to atleast last through the summer.
any comments?
thanks
Ryan

 

[ladmo]

How did you do the compression test? To run a compression test the right way you should first warm up the car. Then when you run the test on each cylinder you need to make sure that the throttle plate is open all the way (full throttle). Typically you let it crank over 2 or 3 times to get the most accurate results. When I did my compression test I did it a couple times on each cylinder til' I got a consistant reading. The low test compression results you got could be cuz you didnt warm up the car or cuz you didnt have the throttle plate open all the way when you were running your tests. On the bad side your head gasket might be leaking or blown. But it could be as easy as just retorqing your headbolts, and if you are still running stock bolts they do tent to stretch after a while and can cause the headgasket to fail or leak. I would first try the compression test the way stated above and post the results on here so we can better get an idea of whats going on

 

[flubyux2]

the engine should already be warmed up or recently ran. not after it had been sitting 2 weeks. and when you crank, hold the throttle to the floor and only stop AFTER the needle on the compression guage stops moving. thats the only time you have an accurate pressure reading.