Re: no engine compression
Oh, that's an easy one.
If the pistion is on the intake stroke, it draws A/F into the cylinder thru the intake valve, right? now the cylinder has all this mixture in it. The intake valve closes, pistion comes back up pressure builds, we have compression. right?
Well, if both valves are closed on the intake stroke, nothing is drawn into the cylinder. In fact, what happens is a vacuum occurs. If he were to hook up a vacuum gauge instead of a compression gauge, he would get a nice increasing reading until the piston bottomed out, then the reading would decrease back to 0 when the piston reached TDC.
Imagine an irrigation syringe. You put your finger over the hole at the tip, then pull the plunger down. It's hard, but you can do it. When it goes back up, does it push air out the hole in the end? Of course not, because nothing was drawn in. It just returns to neutral pressure