I've beem racking my brain on this one. I understand the movement you discoveredin the #1 piston when the head was off. I could see this potentially causing a loss of compression when the vehicle was cold, until the piston and rings expanded once the engine warmed up. Now, if the slop was great enough to where you would lose compression after warmed up (i.e. continuous compression loss), I would have a hard time believing that it would only lose compression intermittently, and you would not hear a continuous piston slap. Also, the wet compression test ruled the bottom end out.

Something is keeping a valve from seating correctly intermittently. I could see the possibility of the valve guide having too much clearance creating this issue, but again, I highly doubt it would be such an intermittent problem. I strongly feel you have a hydrolic valve bucket (lifter) with trash inside that occationally creates a partial blockage allowing too much oil into the bucket, and not relieving excess, thus keeping the valve from fully closing and seating propperly, causing a loss of compression.

My course of action would be to replace ALL of the valve buckets on that one cylinder. Better yet, replace ALL of the buckets on the entire head. The good thing is, yo ucan do this without removing the head from the car. You do need a few special tools and compressed air, but they would be a good investment for you.

Man, I wish I were closer to you to check this thing out. I would love the challenge to fix this thing!

On another note....one of my technicians at work said that the car isn't worth youfixing. He'll buy it off you for $500. [8D]

 

I wouldn't sell him my wheels for $500, let along the whole car. I have new lifters (buckets) for the #1 cylinder, but have not got around to putting them in yet.

JPN, if it was the neighbor at 3:00 am the dogs would have his butt. The car is always in the garage. It's still running good today so I guess I haven't jinxed it yet.

I'm going to start a new thread about the problem I am having with the front door now.

 

I was just joking about selling the car...especially that cheap!

Let us know what happens after you replace those lifters. I'm very curious.

 

I knew you were kidding. I was just going along with you. I'll keep you guys informed when I get around to doing something. As long as it keeps running the way it is right now, I'm not doing anything. It started running good when I switched the Volans for my other wheels and tires for the winter. Now in the spring when I put the other wheels back on and it starts misfiring, how we going to explain that one?

Time to call ghost busters!

 

LOL I know the feeling. My life is like that.

 

I know what youmean. I had a '96VW Passat GLX VR6 a few years ago. NEVER AGAIN! That car only ran right when I needed to move it in the driveway to gain access to another car. Any time I actually NEEDED to drive it, MIL came on, ran like $hit. I blew so much money on that car in the year I owned it, I almost had to take out a 2nd mortgage on my house! I used to be a big VW guy before my Corrado and then the Passat. Both of those cars had under 50k on them, and I about rebuilt both cars entirely before I dumped them. Just pure JUNK!

But, then I moved onto Acura for a 3 years. Got REALLY bored with that car. Then I got my Jeep. Had that for a year along with the 850 wagon. Now the Jeep's gone, getting the R, and soon to sell the wagon. I feel the wagon is the nicest driving car I've had so far. As I said before, I wasn't planning on selling it anytime soon. I was just going to fix it up and drive it. But, I came across that R at such a great deal, I couldn't resist! (my wife wasn't really too fond of the wagon anyway...she hates wagons! But, she likes the pictures of theR....she's always liked Volvo). I'm planning on keeping this one for quite some time.