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Ok, so its been a while since I've posted on here because my engine blew the beginning of last summer and I had to pick up a new car for the time being but the weather here's getting nice again and I think I've put too much time and money to give up on the little guy.

Anyways, back when I blew the engine I tested compression and remember one of the cylinders had 0 pressure so I'm assuming I blew the rings or put a hole in the piston. My question is how do I know which I did and how hard, if possible at all, it would be to replace either?

Like I said I've done a lot and am willing to do more but I'm tight on cash so I'm really hoping this will be a relatively cheap fix give me good news

Tell us more about the failure.

Does it still run? Is it knocking? Loud? sound like a machine gun being fired into a steel drum?

Usually, a piston ring issue will not net you 0 compression. To blow a hole in a piston, you need to really over heat it, or drop a valve. If you drop a valve (likely on ZE's) it will make a serious racket and you likely ruined the piston, valve, maybe head, and maybe sleeve of that cylinder.

My suggestion is to remove the cams from the head you're having trouble iwth and see if you broke a retainer and dropped a valve.

If so, next step is removing that head and inspecting the damage.

It you got to that point, it very likely won't be good, and its time for a new engine.

Since you have a ZE, it would be worthwhile to find a DE and just swap over the pistons/cams and call it a day.

if I remember correctly I was definitely pushing the car to about red line then mis shifted which I know can cause dropped valves :/ After it had a hard time starting barely starting at all and blowing tons of smoke (not really sure which color cause it was night) and not thinking back I'm not 100% sure it was 0 compression...all I remember was it was really bad compared to the other 5 cylinders. I think they were all like 220? And that one might have been 80 idk I don't remmber tha well.

Ill start by doing another compression test, if that shows up bad results ill take out the cams and take a look. I'm going to have to look into DEs and see some prices and performance aspects to see if that's the way to go.

Thanks a lot for the response.