hello all i just started a new topic from my old one bec i thought i might get some answers, 98 tracker 16v and everything running fine but did have a lil miss and engine light was on but i had drove it that way for a long time, started up one day fine left my driveway and started down the street and when i put it in 2nd it started missing really bad so i turned around and got it back home, just did a compression check and all cylinders were fine except number 4 cylinder which i couldn't get any reading on. plugs were all black plus heres the good part number 4 plug had been hit by piston, top of piston is wet so  in other words i will probly have to take it all apart and fix it     right???

Ah, yeah. Pistons hitting anything is not a good sign.

inner engine parts don't stretch so you got some trouble on your hands.

If you know a mechanic try to borrow the little camera...The one I got is a Mac and it's on the end of a flex line with a little light. Take out the plugs and look in there.....you probably have a piece of piston or valve that broke and plowed the plug.

I did an engine swap on a big dump truck last month and without that camera I wouldn't have known if the engine was good or bad until start up. I could check out the cylinder walls, the valves and all the parts, drain the oil and look in the bottom without taking out the pan.

found the problem, after looking at the cam and valve springs i noticed that one of the springs was loose and saw that it had dropped a valve which is nice because the head was redone about 6 months ago by a machine shop that everybody said did the best work so now i dread taking the head off to see the damage, guess thats the way it goes.   if the head is bad whats the best place to get one???         Thanks for all the help yall

Better wait until you get the head off before making any decisions - a few years back I dropped a valve on one of the DOHC G13Bs (from a GTi) - ended up replacing the motor.

It looked like the valve head bounced around the cylinder, there were dings in the cylinder walls that would have meant a bore & sleeve job - and I ended up picking up the pieces of the piston out of the pan - the head was in pretty good shape though.

I've never had any good results from putting on a rebuilt/new head onto a samurai motor. We've done a few and every time the bottom blew out in a very short period of time.

take the head off before getting a new head to make sure the rest is ok. If you got access to the cylinder cam you can check it out before taking it apart.

Good luck with your engine and even good shops will have problems or make mistakes. Unfortunatly for me I'm normally the one that ends up with the 1% of the bad jobs.

i may have missed the big one lol, took the head off and one valve was down a lil and had a knick on one side of it where it hit the plug but other than that everything was good, so i took the head back to the shop and had it fixed i hope! but now i dread the timing issue, im not good at it and it has california emissions if that has anything to do with it??? but wish it didn't

The valve hit the plug isn't that a little unusual?  Are you using the right length or "reach" plugs?

yea i think they are i changed plugs when i got the tracker and they are the same length, but the bottom of the valve just knicked the plug and pushed the hook over after the keepers came out of the top of the valve and when the piston came up it bent the valve a lil and had it stuck inside the head

I've never had any good results from putting on a rebuilt/new head onto a samurai motor. We've done a few and every time the bottom blew out in a very short period of time.

Seems to haappen a lot with the 1ltr and 1.6ltr engines too.

yea i think they are i changed plugs when i got the tracker and they are the same length, but the bottom of the valve just knicked the plug and pushed the hook over after the keepers came out of the top of the valve and when the piston came up it bent the valve a lil and had it stuck inside the head

Are you saying that the valve keepers came off first allowing the valve to drop into the cylinder?  For me that is even harder to believe - unless they were not properly installed to begin with.