Do I have a dropped valve?

[Antonio Garcia]

--- "Raymond A. Kawski" <sr20de@epix.net> wrote:
> Antonio Garcia wrote:

> > The zero compression reading on #4 leads me to believe one of the
> > valves dropped or partially dropped somehow. If so, could I just
> swap

> Pull the valve cover.  Sounds like a rocker got ejected or
> shattered.  When the car runs does it backfire out the intake?

Thanks for the suggestion Ray, but I pulled the VC already last week.
Everything checked out ok underneath there. We did a cam swap on this
motor about 3k miles ago and the motor ran perfect until this happened.
No backfiring observed, the motor seems to run fine except for the loud
noises.

I know it's cheaper to get a motor swap done considering the prices of
SR20s these days, but I have an extra high port cylinder head that I
could swap in. I would like to know based on what I found (zero comp in
#4, the noise, nicked up #4 spark plug) if I'll be ok just swapping in
a new cylinder head and have the car good to go. Can damage/failure in
the head lead to any other damage to the block like scoring of cylinder
walls or piston damage?

Thanks!

Antonio