Thread: VE running on 3 cylinders

Just wanted to post up a "Before" thread showing a video of my car idling on 3 cylinders. I have just started tearing it down to pull the head. My car has been running like this for a while and I really can't recall when it started happening. I never realized it until I brought the car to CA and I'm needing register it, which requires smog, which requires your CELs to be cleared. When I found I was getting a misfire, I inspected it and found I was getting zero compression on cylinder 1. All other cylinders are running strong, no leaks.

How do you know it has no compression aside from the sound? Did you do a compression test? Does that plug wire arc to the frame if you get it close to metal?

Yep, checked the compression and got nothing on 1... hard to see, but I arced it to the vc in the video.

Pop your intake tube off and look at the throttle body and make sure both screws are in it just in case.

Dumb question, Are all the injector clips fully plugged in?

I had this once after I swapped the ECU, and it was seated just slightly cock-eyed so #1 fuel injector wasn't getting signal. You could barely see it with the naked eye but once I had it seated perfectly square it was fixed.

check your camshafts, I got my engine running on 3 cylinders with zero compression on one of them and it was a broken cam.

I really appreciate the suggestions, but would any of these actually cause no compression on the cylinder or just misfires?

Do my cams look broken? I'm planning on pulling the head...

Recently I was really worried that my G20 had dropped cylinder #1 and the injector was flooding and killed Josh's @lynchfourtwenty compression tester. Make absolutely sure before you pull the head. That's all I'm saying.