I was driving the other day and my car took a major crap. I was leaving a stoplight, shifted to second and then all of the sudden there was something majorly wrong with my car. I could tell it was only running on 3 cylinders so i pulled into the next gas station to check things out. I opened the hood and there was oil EVERYWHERE. I noticed that one of the center valve cover bolts had come out and that was the source of the oil loss. The oil was all over the plug wires and coil so i fighured the oil had just shorted one of the plugs so i cleaned most of the oil off and hoped for the best. Luckily I had some extra oil with me so I filled it back up, tightened the valve cover bolt down and headed right home. I noticed I was still losing a lot of oil on the way but it wasn't coming from the valve cover and there wasn't any more in the engine bay so i figured out it was all going out of the exhaust. I pulled all the plugs and did a compression test. 1,2, and 3 were normal. 4...no compression at all. I thought it might be a stuck valve but that doesn't explain the oil loss. My engine was just rebuilt about 2k ago with JE 8.5-1 pistons, eagle rods, new valves, etc..

Any help would be great. If you need more info on my car you can find it here http://www.cardomain.com/ride/293598/3

Could be a lot of things. Did a wet test increase the compression from zero to something? Have you tried a leakdown test at all? ANy strange noises?

There is no knocking, scraping, or rattling noises. It just sounds like any car would if you pulled a plug wire off. I haven't done any tests but i'll try to today to see if I can figure it out. I just want to figure out as much as I can before I have to pull the head off.

Well, whatever it is, I can almost guarantee you it's gonna be ugly. i'd suspect either qa valve failure or a wristpin failure.

Pull the valvecover and see if the valvetrain on the cylinder looks good.

You better cross your fingers man, this one sounds, well uh, not so promising. Especially right after an expensive rebuild. Good luck.

I did a leakdown test and found that the air is leaking out through the oil dipstick tube so i'm guessing the piston might be fried?? I looked into the culinder through the spark plug hole but from what I can see the piston looks fine (although i can't see the edges). So am I correct when I think i'm gonna have to pull the oil pan and pull the piston???

I'd pull the oilpan and verify there aren't metal fragments down there from the piston letting go / wriost pin failure / etc, and then pull the head to remover the piston - you can't get them out though the bottom.

when my 88 accord engine blew thats kind of what happened, I lost power then my air box was filling up with oil (I have carb on that) and I was burning massive oil, and what happened with that is I lost a chunk out of my piston.... so yeah defentily cross your fingers.

ok well today i pulled the oil pan and looked up to find the side of the bottom of the piston was black where the blow-by passed through. the cylinder walls look good so i'm hoping a new piston and rings will do the job. Now just to get the damn head off. what a pain in the ass