jimbojones

Hello, wondered if someone could agree, disagree or offer some light on a confusing problem ive got with the misses KA?

She was driving the other day and rang me to say it sounded like our lawnmower(missing due to laziness and the fact its only a lawn mower!!), she said she checked the oil and the dipper registered nothing, i told her to get some oil in it quick and she came home, it was still missing. i pulled off the leads found it was cylinder 4, pulled out the plug, was wet ish closed the gap on it to see if that helped, it did missfire was gone on idle but there under power.
So i comp tested it and the 3 good cylinders were all 12BAR and seemed fine but the missing one was 17.5BAR!! immediateley i though bugger! but it didnt seem to be using any oil or water so i was a bit confused. thought best get on with it and had the head off, this is where the story confuses me and i hope for some help. The head and gasket were fine, perfect infact, she has it serviced regularly and its in better condition that any other car ive had the head off!! i also checked the valve clearence all was fine, and the valves themselves look fine, as does the bore and piston.

My conclusion is that the coil pack was dying and so it started missing, this flashed oil light as it was almost stalling, she miss read the dip stick and over filled it with oil(the dipper seems poor i get varying results when ive looked before) the crankcase breather is blocked and backpressure in the crankcase chose cylinder 4 as the easiest route out hence the high compression.

I know i could solve this by putting it back together with new crankcase breather and oil and checking the compression, but before i put the head back on i wondered if someone better than I might have some light to shed on it, incase i need the head off to fix it.

its a 2000 1.3 endura engine.

thanks for reading my boring thread about a KA!

tabetha

The high comp is a bit mysterious, but if missing long enough the bore/piston tends to let oil past the rings into the bore, with there being little/no pressure of blowby past the rings that occurs normally, this would form a fantastic seal, but I'd still be amazed at that high.
You could well be right about the coilpack, as these do often go, and can affect one side(plug) only.
If all the bits look ok, I would just bung back together, one of the major problems on the older variants were the rocker shafts snapping, but should be sorted by KA time.
tabetha