I crawled under the car late yesterday afternoon and reinstalled the starter. After pulling the rest of the plugs (on the driver’s side of the motor) and finding no other surprises, I spun the motor a few times to pump out what I could of the coolant in the #1 cylinder.
That done, I took some quick compression readings on numbers 1 through 4. The coolant-filled cylinder read very high, probably a result of some fluid still in there. The other readings were nominal, in the 70-80 range.
On the plus side, there’s no indication of water in the oil. However, in looking back over my blog, there’s some indication that I’ve been mysteriously losing coolant since at least the summer of 2013.
With the coolant mostly purged, I’m pretty sure the car will start. (Heck, I could probably even start it with one plug missing.) If so, I’ll see about moving it outside where I can tear it down. Once I know what I’m really dealing with, I can make some decisions on how to proceed.
Hopefully its something as simple as a head gasket replacement!