1992 Toyota Corolla, 1.6 liter, automatic, air, power steering, 190,000 miles. Replaced plugs, wires, cap, rotor, fuel filter, battery, and belts before daughter sold door-to-door out of town this summer. Car lost power and would not go past 20 to 30 MPH in the middle of the summer. It was towed for repairs. Car started right up and ran well at shop, but they wanted to do more troubleshooting. They replaced the fuel filter and said it seemed awfully dirty (seems odd). Car ran fine 95% of the time. Told daughter to add fuel injection cleaner, seemed OK. Happened one or two more times but cleared up. She is home now and it did it today. I started car, it was not firing on cylinders 1 & 2 (disconnected fuel injector plug and engine speed did not change, did separately on each cylinder. Disconnected fuel line going to fuel rail, pumped gas in jar. Gas looked clean and seemed to flow freely. Do not have tool to check for fuel pressure, but not sure if that is problem. While at it, checked for moisture or other problem in distributor cap, all OK. Not sure where to go from here. Why would it be intermittent, whatever it is? Suggestions?

At the miles comprssion test would be useful,

T
_________________________________________

Tom Greenleaf - MetroWest, Boston

Well, after checking several more things that I thought we cause intermittent problems, I did run a compression test. Cylinders 1 & 2 only had about 30 PSI and 4 & 5 around 180. Blew some air into #1 at TDC and it escaped over to #2 cylinder, which was midstroke. When I blocked air from escaping from spark plug hole, it went out the exhaust manifold. I figure it is either a blown head gasket or burnt valve. There is no mixing of oil and antifreeze. I would not call this an intermittent condition any longer though but a hard failure. I think I will need to pull the head to determine what is actually wrong, and decide from there where to go.

Well that's the problem but you are right - need to look to know just what's up??

T
_________________________________________

Tom Greenleaf - MetroWest, Boston