compression results - blown HG or excess crankcase pressure?

[crappe_coupe]

HI
Sorry for long post. My friends car recently broke down and i was wondering if anyone could help with working out whats wrong. 1.05l 4 speed fox coupe

He was driving up a hill trying to over take in third gear at fairly high revs. After about 30-40s of this he felt the car was down on power and he eased off. At the next roundabout a few hundred yards down the engine definately felt down on power and the oil light flashed once (and possibly temp) but went out again. He carried on driving (!) for another 5 mins until smoke started billowing out the back and drivers side of bonnet.

Once he finally stopped he also noticed the following:
Temp guage read about 3/4 of the way up
Heater vents were blowing hot air in despite being on cold
The back of the engine bay is covered in oil (presumably from a hole in the breather)

The RAC guy found no oil in it and recconed that it had excess crankcase pressure, following having not enough oil leading to engine wear, with possibly blocked breather system.

I assumed it was f###ed but checked the compression out of curiosity and found compression after 2-3 strokes were: cylinder 1 (13 bar) - 2 (1 bar), 3 (1 bar), 4 (13 bar).
Normal spec is 10-15 bar, lowest accpetable level is 7 according to haynes.

My question is, does this look like the figures you'd expect from a worn engine with excess crankcase pressure, or could it simply be a head gasket failure between cylinders 2 and 3 and an oil port, thereby pressurizing the oil. Surely if it was oil starved the other cylinders would be down too and the warning light would have stayed on?

So what do you reckon high crankcase pressure caused by no oil, or blown HG into an oil port therefore dumping all the oil out the breather? Im going to remove the head and see but just wondering what you guys thought.

There is no mayonaise under the oil cap, btw.

[Tahrey1043]

Well, they do suffer from blocked breathers quite a lot, so that could lead to excess pressure ... that has then gone on, when your mate was driving his 1.0 in the Heroic Fashion In Which It Should Be Driven (I ruined my piston rings with the same treatment - no regrets!), to sustained high pressure that's somehow fed back via the other oil lines and blown out the head gasket at the same time as the breather, losing you quite a bit of oil, doing nasty things to the coolant and heater matrix, and not having enough time to build up the subtle layer of mayo that is the telltale when you're not sure whether it needs a prophylactic change.

Certainly if you're only getting 1 bar in the middle two cylinders, something's failed at the top end. It's the 13 bar in the other 2 that's giving me a case of the WTFs, though - even though it's within Haynes spec, it's pretty high for a low tune engine that'd normally see 9.0 thru 10.5. Pray, hard, that you haven't warped the head. Unless maybe someone in the past has skimmed the head / installed a thinner gasket / both to increase the compression for a bit of extra power? (Questionable how well it would run on 95RON, though)

Anyway up it's likely not worth fixing unless you're very sentimental about it get a donor engine or a whole fresh car. Maybe a 1.3 or better if you're wanting to go up those same hills at flank speed!
(What a way to go, though! Respect.)