So, I have this 97' Pajero Evolution that I have been tinkering with for the past 2 months to get her to start after sitting out in the bitter cold (-40 degrees celcius).

I have her in my garage with a heater and such and its just never been able to fully fire. I checked for spark and fuel and I have both. However, I did a compression test just now and one side is all 210-220-215psi and the other side is all 210-180-210

The one problem here about what this could actually look like for me is that the "180" takes a while to get there. I have to crank the engine for about 6-8 seconds for it to slowly get to 180. Is this a piston ring issue? Or can this be a crack/damaged head?

These have the 3.5l V6 mivec 6g74.

I just poured a small amount of oil down that cylinder and Ill be going back out again soon to test that cylinder once more.

Anyone suspect what it could be?

 

Well... Compression shot back up to 220 ish after leaving the oil sit in the cylinder... Can a bad piston ring cause slow compression build up?

 

They can but it's probably due to the fact the engine hasn't run in awhile and the cylinders more or less "dried out". Those are great compression numbers though (anything with the mits V6's over 200 is prime).

If I recall that is a distributed engine... if so, change the distributor. $10 says the coil is bad. It is becoming an extremely common problem in all the distributed Mits stuff around here. The result is the thing won't start.

 

If there's spark the distributor can still be bad?

 

Rings can definitely be the cause of the slow build up. Especially since once you sealed them up the compression was significantly higher. To be sure you can listen to where you hear air escaping.