I took a couple of days off as vacation and we had a very nice day today (partly cloudy with temps in the mid-60's) which is amazing, considering my luck. This afternoon, after cleaning off my driveway of the leaf debris that kept cluttering-up those beautiful Studebaker pics, I decided I should probably mow the lawn. Fortunately, fate intervened and I discovered my 1-year old lawn mower was broken. So I decided to run a compression test on my engine.
For the mechanical types in the crowd, this was run with the engine at operating temperature, dry. And yes, all the plugs were out of the car (they looked good--its running a little rich but no oil fouling) and the throttle was wired full-open.
The results:
- 110 lbs
- 119 lbs
- 121 lbs
- 126 lbs
- 123 lbs
- 120 lbs
I would've liked to see that #1 up closer to the 120 range (factory specs call for 120-140 lbs) but for the most part they're fairly consistent and the highest is within 15% of the lowest (math was never my strong suit). So I'm pretty happy. This was also the first time I got it that warm. Runs incredibly smooth, temperature stayed within range and the oil pressure was nice and high.
Obviously, since the car has reportedly 224,000 miles on the odometer, the engine has been rebuilt at some point. Who knows how long ago though.
I suppose it is possible that a valve adjustment would bring that pressure up a bit, and, of course, running it probably wouldn't hurt as well.
My apologies for not taking a picture of this event. I'm new to this blogging thing!
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