Old cars break. I keep forgetting this fact.
I’ve been chasing a rough idle and rich running condition ever since I bought this Justy in… October. Alright, a few months isn’t forever, but I am a little disappointed to have bought a rolling restoration that gets 20 mpg instead of a finicky-but-economical daily driver.
I had changed the spark plugs, cap and rotor, and bought a new fuel injector for cylinder No. 2. None of this made a difference, so, I thought, there might be a problem within the distributor or somewhere else in the engine. It came time to run a compression test and discover the exact “somewhere else.”
It’s just a compression test. How bad could it be?


Zero. It could be zero.
Well, if you look closely, it did register something. There was Justy ’nuff pressure to move the needle off the peg.
I had to let that sink in a bit. The only possible causes for this are a broken or bent valve, a hole in the piston from contact with either a valve or debris, or both. Regardless, further investigation required pulling the cylinder head, so I started with the valve cover.

I immediately noticed that the Justy does not use hydraulic lifters. These are adjustable, and therefore require adjustment every 10,000 miles or so. I checked the valve lash on cylinder No. 2 first.
The exhaust valve on that cylinder had no gap. The rocker arm was holding the valve open constantly. Small wonder there’s no compression. I adjusted that valve and checked the rest—they were all more or less within spec—and ran my compression test again. To check the condition of the piston rings, I ran both a dry and a wet compression test. (A wet test means adding oil to the cylinder via the spark plug hole. The results should go up a little; If the oil makes a big difference, the rings are shot.)

Keen observers may have spotted the results in my article this week about installing a huge whiteboard in your garage for $14. With the exhaust valve adjusted, compression increased dramatically. It’s still terrible. But, outside of the big spike for cylinder 3, I was feeling optimistic that this would just be a valve job. Pop the head off, lap the valves, reassemble and call it done. Then I got to the part of the job where you remove the crank pulley to get the timing belt cover off and loosen the timing belt.

Do you know that sinking feeling? That one where you suddenly realize that everything you’d hoped would be true were just that: furtive nothings. Best-case scenarios. Unrealistic expectations.
What I was hoping would be an engine-in repair has suddenly become a complete overhaul. I’m lucky that some eBay merchants are selling allegedly complete engine rebuild kits for less than $200, or this thing might be headed to the scrap heap. It would certainly hurt if it was; it’s hard to throw away a project I’ve sank more than $1,500 into (purchase price included).
The plan right now is to reassemble what I’ve taken apart so far and return the Justy to at least a drivable condition. It’s depressing to consider having two immobile project cars. The Justy should run quite a bit better than before, and it might even be kind of quick now. After all, even running on (barely) two cylinders, the car still can pull to 80 mph better than the naturally aspirated Mercedes diesel I used to own.
For the near future, I’m going to focus my efforts into getting that AMC Eagle project mobile. Once the Eagle can start and pull out of the garage under its own power, then I’ll consider the Justy’s ultimate fate.
What do you think? Do the Hoons approve of Justy little engine rebuild, or is it time to cut my losses and Justy throw it away?
(Groan all you want at those puns. I’m not sorry.)
Photos and awful Justy puns copyright 2015 Alan Cesar/Hooniverse.