I had a little scare today working on Jim Derks car. Jim has never seen his car run and the car hasn't been registered in almost 20 years. The car needs lots of work but a very SOLID car. Of course Jim and i want to see it run first and foremost and that is what I am concentrating on. I took out the gas tank and cleaned it and amazingly it is in excellent shape. I pulled the exhaust and intake off to get at the exhaust manifold collector bolts. I am full steam ahead on getting this car running again and it dawns on me, I should do a compression test. We know nothing about this motor except it has 85k original miles.

So i break out my handy compression tester and first cyl. is 120-not bad. I get to #2 and it's 0- sh#*. #3 cyl. is 140, I get to #4 and it's 0.

At this point I thought i should give Jim the bad news. Then i remembered what happened to my 71 . I looked at the valves closely and sure enough.I reset the lash pads and compression was back

Is there any remedy for this besides rebuilding the head? Is this just a trait of the e-88 head? Is it the fact of going from leaded to unleaded gas?

As a guess, I'd say the valves were stuck in the guides. As to how to remedy without disassembly... ??

If they are sticking there is a reason...

Could be as simple as sticky oil, or as complex as what ever caused a piston to smack a valve in the first place...I had a 280ZX I rescued that hadn't been run in years-seriously sticky oil, the pads were poping out like pop corn! I replaced the oil with a seriously detergent variety and added a detergent additive directly to the vlaves, and poof the problem dissappeared, in 100 miles I changed the oil to my normal variety and replacement schedule,and the problem hasn't come back in 35K!

Will

Sticking valves -- can be caused by long storage w/o running and by running on very old, oxidized gas. Can happen with any head, E88's no more susceptible than others. Trying to clean 'em up on the car risks terminal head & block damage. Think valve head broken off inside a cylinder.

Unleaded gas is OK.

I remember with my car that if I filled up or added a bunch of avgas to my tank it seemed to run better as far as the valves not sticking. Is that just a coincidence or is there something to all that lead in the fuel?

Will, what kind of detergent for the oil?