So a while back my car ate a small nut, which shattered the #2 spark plug and let the shards get between the piston and cylinder, eating the cylinder walls.
I finally got a new block for the car (thanks Chris! ) and got the old motor out of the car. I started tearing down the old motor to swap out the innards, and noticed something: EVERY cylinder had significant scarring on the exhaust-side of the cylinder, as well as the piston skirts on that side. This would explain why my motor lost just a bit of compression after being ran a few thousand miles.

I believe it is due to my machine shop not actually checkin the specs on the pistons when I asked them to make sure they'd be in spec while they were being balanced. I'm betting that the pistons were too loose in the bores, causing them to rock and the skirts to scar the cylinder walls.

Lesson learned: Always double check all measurements YOURSELF!

Pics of the pistons:

#1


#3


#4


pics of #2 and the cylinder bores to come.

In the meantime, anyone got 2 spare stock H22 pistons sitting around?

 

I sure do. 2 completely good working h22 pistons. the tops are even pretty cleaned off from nitrous hehe. How does $60 shipped sound? that would be for the pistons rings and rods in perfect working order. compression was 190 and 200 on these 2 pistons.