Compression testing my 200TDI Land Rover Engine,,,,not an easy project.....

Holey shmoley was this way harder than it should have been!

   At first after I had made the glowplug adapter I thought it was going to be fairly straightforward. Pull the plugs, take turns on the cylinders and write down the numbers and repeat it with some oil in the cylinders. Easy right!?

   Would you believe it took me frelling FIVE HOURS!

So here's the story;
     I went out and pulled the glow plugs inserted my homemade adapter in #1 and with the fuel solenoid disconnected cranked over the engine. The gauge moved, a little, it kept fluttering...WTF? Are my valves off or my rings so bad I can't build up pressure? What the hell DID happen when I changed heads?

    So I tried the adapter in #3 cylinder. Same freaking thing, just a fluttering of the needle. Time to put on my thinking cap. While I do that here is the video I shot of it.

I knew in the case of my petrol compression tester it held the pressure. Eventually I reasoned out that the gauge was not keeping the pressure and it wasn't my engine(I hoped).
 So I took the fittings off and tried to see what must have seized up. And there for my eyes to behold was only a pressure relief valve, no one-way valve to hold the pressure. The fluttering on the gauge I was seeing was just the valves opening and closing.
    I conferred with one of my neighbors, a car guy, and we looked at his petrol compression set up and that's when I saw a Schrader valve in the end of his fittings to hold the pressure.
   So I needed to buy/find/make some thing that would work with my homemade adapter.

Since I'm a bicyclist I have some valve cores and old tires laying about, but it was too hard to figure the right thread size to drill for the valve core. Instead I took a schrader valve from a tube and removed all the rubber, exposing the brass body.

The next picture shows where inline I hoped to place it;

The fitting was drilled out undersized(7/32") from the valve(9/64") so I could affect a press fit.

It took me a few tries at fitting;

Before I hit upon putting the valve in the drill and sanding it down with 1000 grit paper.

 Eventually I got it and had to shorten the length by about 1/2" in the process.

Using a metal cap I was able to hammer it in without damaging the thread. Yay for keeping old stuff! here's how it would now go together;

First I had to put in the all important valve!

And screw on the adapter, if it fit.......

Success!

Once that was done I went on to do a dry test, oh wait I have a video.....First a warning the sound is really loud because there is no exhaust on so turn down yer sound.

Then rinse and repeat;

I used a syringe and piece of aluminum tubing to get the oil deep into the cylinder. I put about 3cc's of oil in each bore in it's time. That way they would all be the same or nearly so. You might have noticed that my gauge still bled off by itself at the end of the cranking. It perplexed me until at the end of it all I found I had not put the pressure relief valve on tight......

Results of the tests;
Dry
1=260
2=260
3=260
4=280

Wet
1=320
2=350
3=340
4=360

My conclusion from all this is my engine probably needs rings if not pistons and a rebore. Since I got it used in unknown condition I don't know if it has been gone thru once (or more) before. I won't be able to tell anymore unless I take off the head(again) and have someone measure the bores.