the sad tale of a dying h22

damn i'm so dramatic. anyways, heres my problem.
i've had a #1 cylinder misfire for a couple of days. it happened the day after one nasty misshift from 3rd to 2nd instead of 4th. i have several assistant mechanic friends. we went for the obvious first. we replaced everything in this order:

spark plugs
distributor cap/rotor
spark plug wires

then we finally did a compression test on our faulty cylinder. it read 130. not good considering it should read 200. we did the dry compression test considering it was late. i have to drive 3,000 miles tonight on 3 cylinders :( i have no choice. the cylinder seems to be firing except when at idle. when i get back, i plan on running a wet compression test to determine if its a valvetrain problem or a piston ring failure. if its piston ring failure, i think i'm going to chip out for a rebuilt h22. not worth spending so much money overhauling an old one with 105k miles on it. i started this thread to keep you guys posted, and hopefully help someone in the future.

any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated.

That sucks man, best of luck with that. Hopefuly it'll be something that isn't too too expensive.

well, i finally got my h22 compression tested. the average score of the cylinders was 12x. that sucks considering it should be 200. the mechanic told me i needed a valve job, which is probably gonna cost me about $1200. life sucks right now

float the valves?