Bit of a problem, any help appreciated.

[AndyPt]

Right, I was driving my Scirocco GT2 the other day and suddenly all power died, had to start dropping the gears to try get it back up but nothing was happening, pulled over on the side of the road to inspect, then wouldn't start again.

The engine is a 2e bottom end (Mk3 golf) and a Mk1 golf head.

Since then, I have fitted new spark plugs and checked that I'm getting a spark - which I am. I took them out and they didn't smell particularly fuely.

And the engine still didn't run.

I did a compression test today and I'm getting around 45-50 psi across all the cylinders, that seems very low to me, but if anything was wrong, I can't understand why it would be that low across all the cylinders.

Anyone got any advice/experience/know what's going on?

Thanks in advance,
Andy.

[go-for-it1]

Compressions should be 140 - 160psi on a warm engine with the throttle open, so yours are well low. Squirt some oil down each cylinder and do the compression test again, if it improves significantly then your piston rings are shot! Odd to be driving along for compression symptoms to occur unless you have lost oil pressure and broke the rings in which case you would have seen loads of blue smoke out the back end.

[AndyPt]

The annoying thing is I didn't know the compression before the incident so I don't know if it has anything to do with that or not.
The spark plugs seem to have oil on the tips which is a little worrying, and when I had to pull over when the incident occurred, there was a fair amount of oil on the ground for only being there two minutes or so.

Am I looking at a new engine or is there anything I can do to investigate further?

[Old Mac Rocco]

I think I still have the bottom half of a 1.8 injection engine in my lock up.
I would need to check but I think it is still there.
It has been there a while and may need some work to get it going but you are more than welcome to it.