4 Causes of Low Compression in an Engine
Compression is a very important part of an engine. If you want your engine to function properly, you need to have good conditioned compression in your vehicle. Healthy compression means higher engine performance. Because of low compression, you may experience different engine-related issues which are quite expensive to repair. Hence, we suggest you repair your compression soon with an experienced mechanic and enjoy driving with ease and comfort.
In this article, we have discussed four common causes of low compression. Let’s start with its meaning!
How does compression work in a vehicle?
The compression mixes air and gasoline inside the engine’s cylinders. If you want your compression to work properly in your vehicle, each cylinder of the engine must have the right amount of compression. If the compression ends up or becomes low in any of the cylinders, then your vehicle will not be able to drive normally. However, you may notice significant problems in the engine due to low compression. For instance, if you are driving a Honda vehicle and due to low compression, you are not able to accelerate your vehicle as usual then you can replace the old engine with honda used engines and experience smooth comfortable driving.
Top four causes of low compression in your engine
Faulty valves
The most common and frequent cause of low compression is faulty valves or valve seats. This can also affect exhaust valves or intake valves of the engine poorly. The valves seal the combustion pressure before it releases into the exhaust. Due to a leak on the valves, the compression also leaks out into your exhaust during the combustion process and causes holes or other damages on the valves thus you need to fix this or replace them ASAP.
Damaged Piston Rings
The second cause of low compression is damaged piston rings. Your car engine has 2 to 4 piston rings. These rings make sure that no compression will leak into the crankcase, and ensures that no oil will come up in the combustion chamber. Fortunately, it is not very common in the modern car engine. But, due to prolonged use or overage piston rings get damaged or worn out. While replacing piston rings you have to disassemble the whole engine, which is a costly job too thus we recommend you to look for used branded engines like Honda used engine, Audi used engine, BMW used engine, or used porsche engines for sale to bring your vehicle back on road in a cost-efficient way.
Wrong camshaft timing
Due to faulty camshaft timing, you may find low compression on all cylinders. Sometimes it is also caused by but it could wrongly or poorly installed belt or chain. The timing belt or chain rotates and transfers power to the camshaft to control the valve's opening times. Whereas valves control the inflow and outflow of gases from the combustion chambers. When the belt or chain gets damaged, it fails to inject air-fuel mixture at the right time, and also fails to release the exhaust gases at the right moment. This leads to low compression problems in your vehicle.
Worn-out head gasket
The Head gasket is technically placed or located between the cylinder head and the engine block. It is used to separate the oil, coolant, and compression in the engine. If the head gasket fails, you can find lots of problems in your vehicle such as compression in coolant, oil in coolant, etc. There is a metal ring around each cylinder in the head gasket, which gets fail when this ring gets fail and leads the compression to flow from one cylinder into another. This is another cause of low compression.
Conclusion
Out of many causes, we have discussed the four most common causes of low compression in an engine that may cause other serious problems in your engine. To diagnose problems with low compression, you need to do a compression test once in six months.