Your mechanic seams to be up front with you. Assuming you
don't have a stuck oil pressure relief valve. I would drive it
as stated. In time if other problems don't come up, and you
still have low compression in the same cyl. I would have him do
the job.

            Eric                   86-VW4x4
            vw4x4@fyi.net          72-240z
            Pittsburgh, PA USA     1936-Chrysler

On Wed, 3 Mar 1999, Mark Schrope wrote:

> Hi everybody
>
> I was on the list until last September but had to sign off when I moved
> here to California for school and got too swamped with work to read any
> email.
>
> I've got a problem now with my compression and was hoping to get some
> advice.  I'm dribing and '89 by the way.  Basically it looks like I've got
> a sticky valve.  The mechanic was troubleshooting something else and found
> that air shot into the #2 cylinder was coming out the exhaust.  The
> compression was 75 as of two weeks ago but it feels like I may have lost a
> little bit more power recently.
>
> The mechanic said that I might as well keep driving it for now but I'm
> having second thoughts.  I put a lot of miles on the van and I will likely
> be driving back across the country this summer so I'm thinking I might as
> well get the work done now.
>
> He said that the valve would have to be redone and if we were going to be
> in that far I might as well have the headgaskets done on both sides-- the
> last head gasket job was about 70,000 miles ago.  Ballpark estimate was
> about 700 to do the one side and deal with the valve or just over 1000 for
> everything.
>
> I'm inclined to get it all done with at once.  So, I was hoping to get some
> feedback from others on whether this sounds like the best plan.  Any
> thoughts or comments would be appreciated as I agonize whether to spend
> this kind of money.  Thanks in advance and please p-mail as I'm not getting
> the list.
>
> Mark Schrope
> '89 Wolfsburg
>