Hello all, with the price of gas going up a little more every day, I've been thinking about putting my '84 sunbird back on the road full time. But I don't know if it is worth the money. Last fill up, it got 22MPG around town which is pretty good. I was tuning it up last week and noticed a fair amount of oil in the tube between the turbo and Throttle body. I've traced it to the vent between the valve cover and the air cleaner. I'm thinking excessive blow by... So I did a compression test, all plugs removed, and the tube from the turbo disconnected from the TB, turned the engine over with the starter each time for about 4 seconds. I had a little over 100 in 3 of them and about 110 in the other. To my knowledge this 1.8L Turbo engine from '84 has 8:1 compression. Are my results about right? Am I testing the wrong way? What do you guys think?

The car needs new tires, and a stereo upgrade before I'm going to drive it regularly. The paint and interior are "ok" and it currently runs alright, though it's pretty slow off the line. I'm willing to put a few hundred into it because I like the the 80's style of the interior. I've also located a '91 sunbird thats pretty rough with the 2L TBI engine, not turbo charged. It has over 150,000 miles on it but I think I could have the car pretty cheep. I'd be interested in rebuilding an engine for my '84 if it wouldn't cost much. I'm pretty good with mechanics and have rebuilt a few engines, so I'd do all the work short of the machining but I don't know much about these motors. Were they very reliable? What do rebuild kits normaly cost? If I would rebuild one of the engines, which is better/cheeper, what are the major/minor differences?