i just bought a b18b1, tranny mani's and wire harness, today for 250 dollars! the only thing wrong is number two cylinder has a lower compression than the rest. how could i fix that? new gasket and or rings? valves maybe?

 

Yes, and or all of the above.

 

how much lower?

 

its 130-135 and 170-175 on the rest

 

not great, but not awful. i believe 135 would be the bare minimum for within spec. of course being more than 28psi different than any other cylinder would be effectively "out of spec" lol. as said above, rings and/or valves might be the problem. i would do a wet compression test and see if the numbers increase substantially. if so, it's the rings. if not, then it's leaking past the valves.

 

Is there a method of compression testing the engine when it's not in the car?

 

carefully?

i forgot the part about not being in the car lol

but for s&g's.. assuming you could devise a way to keep the engine/trans stationary.. and you had some wire, a starter, flywheel, and a battery, then you could probably test it. it wouldn't be super accurate because you can't get the engine to operating temp, aside from maybe pointing a forced air diesel/kerosene heater at the engine block for 30 minutes lol. either way, you only need to see if there is a big change between wet and dry compression tests, and you should be able to figure that out just fine without being at operating temp.

cylinder leakdown testing would obviously be easiest to do, however it's likely to provide even sketchier results with a cold engine.

 

^^^

Yeah we used this method when I worked a swap shop where we used to get engines from Japan.
It has to have the tranny and starter bolted up. Get 2 blocks to support the engine from falling back, a teaspoon of oil in each cylinder, a car battery/charger.
Hold the trottle open and jump the starter. LOL memories from 1996.....