"Low" Compression in 1 Cylinder - Bad Head Gasket?

I rented this tool from autozone, https://www.autozone.com/test-scan-...stem-pressure-testing-kit-22-piece/449951_0_0
pressurized my system kept it pressurized through the night , woke up next morning and put the camera down the spark plug holes to see what I could see.

my low compression cylinder had a small puddle of coolant sitting on top of piston. I couldn't replicate it any other way.

removed my head could never find a crack on my cylinder head until I removed the valve completely and found a long hidden crack in my head.

Tool man Timmy has a whole bunch of videos that makes this job not to painful, just long.

 

good info, one of the 2 easy ways to isolate coolant intrusion...
another, close valves & pressurize cylinder through sparkplug hole in suspecting cylinder using compression tester hose with shreader valve removed & watch coolant lever rise....

 

That's a cool trick, I never came across that. I'll add that one to the memory bank, thanks

 

Got both heads off. This is the cylinder which had low compression. Nothing extremely obvious jumping out so hoping it was just the head gasket and not a crack in the head or anything.

Will have it pressure tested, decked and valve job on it. I am also in the middle of a 5 speed and 4x4 swap so this was just the icing on the cake.