Periodic tests are the best indicators of total cylinder sealing and efficient operation A remote starter switch and a top-quality, screw-in-type compression gaugeâ such as these models from ...

Curious to learn just how healthy or unhealthy your engine is? Get yourself a compression tester and find out. See the best compression testers here.

A compression test is a simple way of showing how well your car engine’s pistons are sealing.

We dyno test a 6-liter LY6 LS engine with three stock-style cylinder heads from EngineQuest and a camshaft from Comp Cams.

When you bring your vehicle in for a compression test, a mechanic places a gauge into each of the cylinders to read how much pressure the engine is producing when the engine turns over.

Any tune-up should include a compression check and cylinder leakdown test. Compression should be uniform within 5-10 psi across all cylinders.

To maintain consistent compression during testing, all four of the test heads were ordered with the same 62cc combustion chambers.

A misfire means that a cylinder in your engine isn’t producing the power it should because the air-fuel mixture in it didn’t properly ignite and burn.