I've been wondering if my car is burning small amounts of coolant. Some mornings, the exhaust has a sweet smell to it rather than just the nasty exhaust smell. The overflow tank is on the low side; however, I did have a leak caused by the hose clamps not being tight enough, so I don't know for certain whether it's just low from that.

I bought a compression test tool and watched a few youtube videos describing how to do it. Every one of those videos said that you should crank the car for a count of 5 revolutions of the motor to get your results. When watching those videos, it was clear from watching the compression gauge that the pressure stopped increasing by the 4th to 5th count.

My car was different though. On mine, I set the gauge so I could watch it while cranking. I had to crank my car 8 to 9 revolutions before the needle on the compression gauge stopped rising. Overall, I think my numbers were okay (newbie perspective at least), but it surprised me that I had to crank so much to get the numbers to top out.

Here were the numbers I got:
Cyl 1: 195 Cyl 2: 188 Cyl 3: 195 Cyl 4: 195

Two questions:
1. Is it normal for my car to take 8-9 revolutions to get those readings?
2. Do those readings look normal for my car? (I have 238k on the engine - think it's original).
Note: I retested cyl 2 just to make sure I got the correct results and it was consistently a little lower but obviously not that much.

Thanks in advance,

Jonathan

 

are you doing the readings with a warm or cold engine?

 

The engine was warm - not hot. Hadn't been run in about an hour but with the temp being 90 degrees outside, the engine was still warm to the touch but didn't burn me either.

 

the numbers are good and its a little surprising it took that long to get to the peak, but it would not worry me too much.
have you pressure tested the cooling system?

 

Ne
Tried to but the tool I rented from Auto zone didn't fit my car. Not sure if there is another place I could rent one or if I have to buy one. Suggestions are welcome : )

 

the next thing i would do would be a cylinder leakage test, the tool is kind of like a compression tester but it allows you to put compressed air in the cylinder and measure the amount of leakage past everything

 

Everything sounds normal. You can normally tell if you have a hg leak cause the white smoke will not dissipate for several feet.