[kindlethespirit]

My local indie shop owner recently bought the above vehicle at auction to sell on his small lot. He bought it cheap, which is the first sign of trouble. The second sign of trouble was knowing that the engine has a misfire.

The first order business was replacing the coil on the #1 cylinder. This did not resolve the misfire. So they performed a compression test and determined that there is no compression in the #1 cylinder. A scope of the cylinder revealed a bent valve and possibly a hole in the piston.

Yesterday I stopped in to see what progress they were making. The owner of the garage and the mechanic and I are friends and they don't mind me watching and learning. So they've now begun the process of removing the engine from the car. When they took the right side exhaust off, there was a lot of rattling inside the pipes. When the mechanic turned the pipe a lot of aluminum fell onto the garage floor. Well that didn't look too good! I'm going to stop in again today and see what further progress they made.

BTW, 69,000 miles on the engine.