Bought a 98 sunfire with the 2.2 ohv engine, 5 peed manual transmission last week. Owner said it had been running great then just overheated, but not real bad. After i got it back to the shop i removed the head to find the aluminum cap off a spark plug squashed into the head. :headshake
Pulled it out and cleaned up what little damage there was then proceeded to replace head gasket (as it was blown) and reassemble engine. Head was tightened to spec and in sequence.
Tried to start and no compression??
Thought maybe the timing chain had jumped because of the crud in cylinder...nope...timing was bang on. Gears were good and so was tensioner and chain.
Finally found the valves were leaking...all 8 of them!! I backed the rockers off and re-adjusted them finger tight as you would if you were adjusting valve lash on a solid lifter (slight clearance) and now have compression on all 4, but obviously i cant run it this way.
Does anyone have any idea what would cause this?
All the rockers are working so i dont believe that the lifters are the problem..checked the pushrod lengths, they ARE the factory rods. No bent valves, they were all checked when head was off.
Im stumped...the only explanation i can come up with is that some dumbass had the head decked/milled and didn't do the valves, in which case it never should have run.(might have been a sales pitch)
Is there any way of telling if the head was shaved down?? What else could it be?
Sorry for the long post, just want to get all the info across clearly.

Anybody?? I gotta get this figured out as the wife is teasing the hell outta me. lol

Does anyone have a good overhead view of the rocker arms for this engine?? Maybe they were replaced with the wrong ones??