helping a friend with one of these wagons.Fitted with 1.6 8v single cam engine.No. 4 is misfiring.Fuel/spark ok but 0 compression.Thinking holed piston or major valve trouble.Are these engines any good to start with and worth rebuilding,any known issues resulting in this damage.Borrowing an endoscope tomorrow and hoping to see the damage through the plughole.Seems to be a few for sale on Ebay for two to three hundred quid so that may a cost effective way to sort out.Can you buy just one piston/rings or are they sold in sets.

They are prone to sticky valve problems, also gummed up hydraulic tappet, or valve seat recession but the likely hood is it is a chunk burnt out the exhaust valve.
It could also be a broken camshaft between cylinder 3&4 but you would get backfiring in that event.


If it was a piston the sump would pressurise

[Edited on 6/11/09 by britishtrident]

stick some oil down the plug hole and do the compression test again, if it remains bad then rules out worn piston/rings.

You'll see the piston top but it wouldn't show a broken ring or valve problem. I've seen one of these engines wear the lobes out on no4 as well as the followers sticking, burnt exhaust sounds likely culprit though.

These engines tend to suffer valve problems if fully synthetic isn't used and changed regularly.

thanks for the replies,carry on at the weekend when i get the scope.

Just had my 54 plate 1.7 diesel Meriva written off after a truck side swiped me.
The insurance gave me £5k for it, what a result, it was the biggest lump of cr@p this side of the black stump.
What I would like to know is how come after the payout the missus is now running around in a 6 month old loaded Ford Galaxy and Ive got a Combo van, or is that a woman thing.
Cheers,
Bob

[Edited on 6/11/09 by splitrivet]

As said they have alsorts of valve trouble. Id be surprised of its got bottom end trouble.

Head off youl probably fix it for 100 quid for couple of new valves and maybe tappets to be sure.

Theyr the modern version of the olde ohc that they had in the astras etc.