Scrap or have a project myself? 96 camry w/ no compression in one cylinder

[lsd]

Scrap it unless you love the car or really want to work on it. Machine work is $$$ and your investing all that time money into the engine alone and not the rest of the car. It's a 20+ yr old car and there are plenty of other things that will go bad sooner or later.

 

[JCH13]

The $1800(?) is, exactly like you said, a sunk cost. Don't fall prey to the sunk-cost fallacy. It would be a mistake to try to 'save' that money by putting in more work.

However, if the vehicle has value to you/your family as a car, then it might be worth fixing.

1) Get a leak-down tester as has been suggested. This will tell you exactly what's wrong and thus what your options are. If you find a bad valve you will need to pony up for head work at $100-200ish, if you find a band ring/piston you might have to buy a new engine or rebuild, or you might confirm the bad HG theory.
2) If you don't part it out or sell it... Work on the engine in the car, or yank it and do external work where you can perform multiple possibly over-due items like oil seals, water pump, etc. depending on how froggy you want to get.

 

[OverVolt]

They don't make them like they used to though. Its a decision to either basically rebuild the car really nice or scrap the MF'er.

Not alot of in-between IMO.

 

[AdamK47]

Toyota's lasts forever and never requires any major maintenance. You don't really need that cylinder.