Mick's 70 Lowlight

So I managed to finish off the ECU installation and verify everything was working but could not get the engine started. Assuming that it was an issue with the ECU / wiring, I worked through everything to eventually discover that the problem was a lack of compression. Stumped that I was getting practically a zero reading across all four cylinders I went out and bought another compression tester as it seemed more likely that the tester was busted, but the result was the same. On further inspection I could see that there is a leak between the heads and barrels.

I need to pull the engine and tear it down to find out what's going on. The only thing that I can think of is that the mill head was out of tram when I decked the cylinder heads, causing the chambers to be out of square. This is the only logical reason why all four barrels should be the same.

It's also made me wonder how I can prevent this in the future. I'll obviously check the mill for tram before machining the heads, but a leak down test would have also highlighted this before I wasted any time building up the long block and installing it in the car.

So I'm a little bit disappointed, but it's also a valuable lesson. Apart from getting the engine out of the bus and tearing it down I also need to decide what to do with the motor. If I'm correct on the cause, I will need to re-skim the heads, which will also raise the CR a little, which in turn will mean some more work on the chambers to bring it back down again. I could negate this by installing copper gaskets but 85.5mm copper gaskets seem to be like hens teeth. I guess I could always make some.

Will see what the verdict is when I pull the engine.