low compression on numbber two cyl

Asked by Mike Dec 22, 2014 at 07:04 AM about the 1999 Saab 9-5 4 Dr 2.3t Turbo Wagon

Question type: General

170k  the car is losing power in cyl two    is there an easy fix

2 Answers

101,335

If you're lucky it's just a bad lifter. If you're not so lucky it's a bad head gasket. Worse yet a bad valve/valve seat. Even worse bad piston rings. You can try and degunk the engine with seafoam or some equivalent, and run high-mileage oil. That might breathe new life into tired lifters. Check your rad fluid and oil, look for cross contamination that might suggest a head gasket problem. To fix that you'll have to replace the gasket, which means removing the heads. If you remove the heads might as well send them to a shop for a rebuild - although sometimes it's more practical to replace the heads with new ones. Bad rings means a total engine teardown and rebuild. At that point the easiest solution is to list your car here on Cargurus as a "mechanic's special!"

101,335

Another thing you could check are your spark plug threads, make sure you're not getting any blowby.

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