i am trying to help someone out that recently purchased a 97 protege
i am not to familiar with mazda and i cannot figure out which engine it has i looked all around under the hood area to find a sticker saying which engine it has but could not find one the only thing the motor says is 16 valve so i am assumming it has the 1.8 but i could be wrong.
anyways it failed an emissions test very bad on the hydro carbons and the co% but flew by on the nox levels and i noticed when checking things over it has alot of air pressure coming up through the oil cap when the cap is removed you can hear it clearly and when you put your hand over it there is alot of pressure coming up. the pcv valve looks fairly new and when i removed the pcv valve i could hear it sucking air in and when i put my finger to it, it sucked my finger to it, so i am pretty sure the pcv system is working properly. so my question is does this sounds like the rings are shot and the motor may not be worth saving? the car does need some other work also