I am about to put a vortech on my 96 w/ 86k miles. I wanted to make sure my rings and valves etc. are good so I did a dry compression test. They ranged from 175-180 w/ the exception of one cylinder ( second cylinder from the firewall on the drivers side) that I tested twice and it only made 165 PSI. What does this mean? Should I be worried? Should I still put the vortech on or is there some other tests? Thanks
Put the Vortech on there and call it a day. It will be fine. One cylinder is always lower than the rest. I've seen 100's of threads on here where that is the case. If it was down to like 100psi or 125psi and the others were 175-185, then I would worry.
That doesn't sound too bad, actually. The acceptable tolerance is about 10%, so 175-185 and 165 isn't bad. If you check later and find out that one cylinder has gotten even further away from the others, it could be a valve not fully sealing, but you're still fine. When you have two bad numbers next to each other, it could be a head gasket, and if all of them are low, then it's things like the rings or pistons telling you that it's time for an overhaul.
Run leakdown test to rule it out... Sometimes an exhaust or intake leak won't show up as bad on just a compression test.
96 to 98 cobra have a 9.85 compresstion ratio stock so 160 is nothing to wory about on a dry test > go for it with the supercharger > I'm at 107,000 miles on mine and just now starting to mod the he!! out of it > I SMELL NITROUS >
