If your a bit handy around the engine you can do a wet & dry compression check, you will need a compression tester £15.00 from E- bay or Halfords, a spark plug socket and some oil, usually engine oil will do in a small dispenser.
1. Firstly remove the HT lead from the coil to the dizzy cap (This ensures the engine doesn't startup when testing)
2. Remove the plug and HT lead nearest the cambelt and insert the compression tester, ensuring it is tight and threaded correctly.
3. Crank engine over with ignition 3 or 4 times and record reading.
4. Remove tester and squirt a little oil into the cylinder, again repeat compression test ensuring that U reset the compression tester with each cylinder
5. Replace with plug and HT lead.
6. Then proceed working left to right repeating steps 2 to 5 until you have tested all 4 cylinders.
Once this is completed you can compare readings on each cylinder, ideally all 4 cylinders should be +/- 5% of each other with & without the oil, i don't know offhand the compression settings for thsi model but it should be around 110 to 120 psi, the reason for the oil is to seal the rings if worn.
If you notice a significant difference between the dry test and wet, wet should always be better you may have to fit a set of rings, this will involve a weekend's worth of work, hopefully U won't.
I'll post later on the settings for both the 8 & 16 valve compression settings.
Hope this helps
