I'm wondering if a engine rebuild is necessary for my 1988 2.9l engine.
It did run but fairly poorly. I checked the compression and cylinder 1 had 0 compression, I put oil in the cylinder to see if it would help and it did not. I did a head gasket leak test on the coolant and it didn't show any signs of emissions in the coolant. So I decided to take off the head and see what was going on.
One thing I noticed right away as I got the valve cover off, the pushrod for the intake valve on cylinder 1 was not installed properly, it was laying on its side in the intake valley area as if it popped out of its place or perhaps someone before me didn't install it at all. I figured that could be why it ran poorly but it doesn't quite explain the 0 compression. When I took the passenger side head off and exposed the pistons I tried rocking them and the #1 piston sure rocked back and fourth a lot with just my hands. More so than the other two pistons on that side. I just got done checking the clearances between the piston and the cylinder wall. For cylinder 1, I was able to get .56mm to fit between the wall and piston, for cylinder 2 it was around .12mm and cylinder 3 was also around .12mm. my manual says piston clearance should be more in the range of .028-.048mm. of course that is quite far out of range. Could that much space cause cylinder 1 to have 0 compression or could that be related to the pushrod not being installed. Regardless I'm wondering what would need to happen to fix it. i imagine replacing all the pistons, piston rings, rod bearings and main bearings would get rid of the play and get the compression back up.