need your help (engine cranking)

[Ground hawg]

Ok, i've now blown my second engine this one with just under 8k on it. with only 39k on a 99 wagon i'm doin pretty good. so what i need to know is this. is there any way to crank the engine over from inside the engine compartment while i run a compression test on all the cylinders.

Thanks in advance Ground hwg

[BlueHUMMERH2]

This is really out of my league, but if you remove the connections to the crankshaft, couldn't you turn that manually to adjust the position of the pistons? Is that what you're trying to do?

[Ground hawg]

sorry, to get an accurate reading I need to turn the engine 8-10 revolutions per cylinder. thank anyway

Grnd hwg

[ssgharkness020147]

No you need to crank on it to get a max, reading. Out of curiosity why do you want to do a compression test? Do you think you blew out a piston, or washed the bore? If you are concerned about a cracked block, head, blown gasket a compression test will not accuratly diagnose any of those.

[Ground hawg]

The reason for the compression test is so that I can find which cylinder is leaking, with out having to dissasemble the whole engine. the only sighn of a problem is that the engine presurises the cooling system to such an extent that it blowes all the coolent out the system. this as you say could be caused by several different things. this is only a tool to speed up the prognossis.

[ssgharkness020147]

A compression test is not really going to help there either. I went through this same thing a while back. I talked to Diesel Depot down in GA, and here is what they told me to do:

Pull out the dog house and engine cover with the truck on flat level ground. Then to remove the two coolant block off plates in the rear of the block. You know the ones to install the rear head cooling kit? Those plates are the ones I'm talking about. From there you start the truck, which ever side has a blown gasket etc... will have coolant bubbling out of or in that port. I'd try this, if your truck wont fail a coolant pressure test its not gonna fail a compression test either.

On a side not why not just pull both heads? In the long run you'll thank yourself not having to worry about blowing another crappy stock headgasket. And you can have both heads pulled checked for level, and magnufluxed while you are at it. Further preventing future problems. Just my 0.2