I would like to begin by saying thank you to all who will reply to this post, any insight at this moment helps.

Make: 1973 Lincoln Mark IV
Engine: 460

My problem is this, about two weeks ago, my car ran beautiful, the very next day it ran horrible, like it was running on two cylinders. I spent hours on forums trying to trouble shoot my problem. I first found fuel in my oil so I fixed that right away, flushed the engine and changed the oil and filter. when it started it ran great once again, I gave it a local 20 min test drive and all was fine, I parked it at the store, when I came out and tried to fire her up, I got nothing but a backfire.. a very nasty backfire, but wouldn't start and I was left stranded. I rebuilt the carb,took my time and did it right, but I still get nothing, I pulled my plugs and flooded they are with a slight oil film. fed up, I had the car towed to the local shop. The Mechanics are saying I have, and I quote "0" compression. I find this hard to believe, considering the fact that this car has NEVER smoked blue or white, no moister out of the pipes, and from my knowledge rings or valves show sights or break down long before they finally give. This car doesn't sit, I drive it 3 times a week to local car shows and sometimes out of state cruises. I have great spark, and more then enough fuel. I understand without compression the car will never start, but if someone can make some kind of sense of this and give me peace of mind as how a motor can run beautiful one day and crap the next and finally not at all I would feel much better about this.

what I had done to the car so far:
new fuel pump
rotor/cap/plugs/wires
ignition coil
fresh oil change
rebuilt carb

 

Well, fuel in the oil is definitely fuel pump. That's fixed. 0 compression would be rings, could be a head gasket. Hard to tell. 0 comp on 2 adjacent cylinders is almost certainly a head gasket, on a single or random cylinders could be valves or rings etc.

Find out of the cylinders are next to each other than have 0 compression. If it's not a head gasket sign, I'd check the valvetrain to make sure the valves are actually closing. If that's good then have them do a leakdown test(if they haven't already) to find the source of the compression loss.

 

the shop said they only did a dry compression on the driver side cylinders, never touching cylinders 1-4 on the passenger side. the shop also said that they are going to add a couple drops of oil to bring back the pressure ( which we ALL know that will happen) but the shop also said that the oil would clean the flooded gas from the rings bringing back the compression, now unless there is a new breakthrough in auto mechanics I believe this to be "BS" ... needless to say, I had the car removed and taken to a recommended auto shop who is a lil bit more "Ol' Skool" with these types of engines.

I do have a question, if it was a valve train or a ring problem, wouldn't it show signs? or would it just fail on the spot?, even when trying to turn the car over, still sounds like a normal crank... this car never leaked, smoked or knocked. and still doesn't to my knowledge.

I would like to thank you very much for the speedy response.

 

Well, fuel is a solvent. So getting a bunch in the oil dilutes it and can damage any of the moving parts in various ways. Scoured bearings from lack of lube, it could have knocked some varnish loose that got into the lifter galleries or lifters causing them to stick slightly, just enough to keep valves from completely seating. Could have washed the cylinder walls and tore the rings up. An actual compression test and leakdown test need to be run to find the source of the compression loss. Then go from there.

 

*** UPDATE***
I had my car removed from the shop and taken to a more competent shop, they trouble shot my problem within 45 min doing a leak down test, everything is good, just a bad timing Chain,.. it has 20 degrees of slack. hopefully this is the fix I was hoping for.

I just want to say thanks to everyone who posted to my problem, and in the future, I now know where I can turn to for questions and answers.

 

That'll do it, throws the valve timing WAY off. Have them replace the chain with a good double roller chain, like a Cloyes.