Engine 03 engine compression??

03 engine compression??

My 01 engine is gone, Im putting an 03 engine in to replace it. Im shopping for them right now on www.car-part.com and a lot of them list the compression.
I did a search and only came up with more questions.
First, what should the compression be? 200??
Second, if the elevation does effect it then would it be higher or lower?
Last, Would the engine not being in the car or anything else for that matter, make a difference?

Thanks.

To get an accurate compression reading, the engine NEEDS to be at operating temp. Cold engines have different piston-cylinder and ring clearances. Engines are designed to be ran at operating temp, so checking compression on a cold engine yields inaccurate data - HOW inaccurate? I have no clue.

Compression SHOULD be in the neighborhood of 200psi. That is optimal. My 2003 Corolla has ran consistent 200-210 psi on all 4 cylinders since day 1 (now have 57000 miles). It won't make any difference whether or not it's actually mounted in the car, if you can find a way to run it outside of the engine bay to get it up to operating temperature (difficult to do, I'm sure). However, the differences are probably NOT that great between a cold engine and a warm engine. I'll test that out today and get back to you on my car.

Minimum compression pressure is 145 psi. Toyota specifies 189 psi to be normal for these engines and there should be no more than 15 psi difference between the lowest and highest readings. However, if one was a bit higher than the other, then you could assume it was carbon deposits in that cylinder - just gotta use your judgement, I suppose.

These measurements are at sea level, I do believe. Meaning, the higher the altitude, the lower the reading. I'm in SW VA (about 2000 ft. elevation) just for comparison.

That MAIN concern would be LOW compression - that would suggest a problem with the rings, valves, or head gasket. If it's too high, then chances are that there's just some carbon build-up (that's a fairly easy fix, though.)

Late,
Trav