1998 Volvo s70 Compression question

chadley593 · Post by **chadley593** » 26 Dec 2011, 16:21

1998 Volvo S70 2.4 L non turbo 5-speedI just did a compression test on my S70 after replacing the head gasket and it is reading 160-170. Does anyone now what it typically should be at?

Thanks for the help!

Post by **JRL** » 26 Dec 2011, 16:25

160-170!

Post by **erikv11** » 26 Dec 2011, 18:16

Normal compression is 190-210 for your car's engine, so at first glance those numbers look low.

That assumes the engine was warm before you started, the throttle was wide open, and you gave it 6 or so cranks to get up to full compression.

However, the fact that the readings are rather low may not be a concern, the key is usually that compression should be even across the cylinders. This is because most of the cheap compression gauges are not well calibrated. It is unlikely that all of your cylinders have really low compression, if there were all between 160-170 then probably the engine is fine.

Post by **precopster** » 26 Dec 2011, 19:44

On a cold engine at the pick & pull I got b/w 195-205 on all cylinders dry test but this motor only had 72K miles.
These are 11:1 compression engines and have high numbers when new.

If yours is low across the board and it has high miles this is fairly typical.

What are your miles?

chadley593 · Post by **chadley593** » 27 Dec 2011, 08:07

I have 155,000 miles. We replaced the head gasket and the engine turns over but it wont fire. The computer reads that there is an ignition error. We noticed that the spark plug wires are not working like they should so I have new spark plugs, wires, distributer cap, and rotor button that I will try installing and I hope that does the trick.

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 27 Dec 2011, 08:57

The computer reads that there is an ignition error.

What was the code number?

As far as your compression readings go they are quite consistent which is good. As far as the raw numbers go I always take them with a grain of salt since there is so much variation between the compression gauges themselves. I have a cheap Harbor Freight gauge that always reads low on the raw numbers but it is helpful to spot large differences.

...Lee

Post by **erikv11** » 27 Dec 2011, 09:32

Do the wires have spark?

mechanye · Post by **mechanye** » 27 Dec 2011, 10:02

disregard