After a day of running on the new plugs I decided to start trying a few things now that I know exactly which cylinders are having problems.
I've been told several times to disconnect the fuel injector for the dead cylinder so that I'm not wasting gas.
Given that #2 shows only 5psi compression I started with that one.
It's been two days now and at idle I can only tell a slight difference.
Driving it however there is a significant difference. More than I expected.
For one it runs harder, rougher than before.
I've had to be careful how I get going from a stop ever since I messed this engine up.
Too much throttle too quickly will guarantee a stall, however once it gets up around 1000 rpm I could usually floor it and get going.
With this one cylinder deactivated it's taking much longer to get up to that 1k number and once it does it still takes a lot longer to accelerate up to speed.
At highway speeds it's having a harder time climbing hills too. Much harder.

This seems to confirm my theory that the bad cylinder was actually putting out at least some power once the rpms got above a certain range.
A compression test only shows how much pressure is being developed at cranking speed. It is only relative indication of pressure at running speed.
I figure that below a certain rpm (which seems to be around 1000) the leaking valves would keep that cylinder from building up enough compression to enable good enough combustion to provide power.
Above that range things would be moving too fast for the leak to keep up with the rising pressure thus allowing combustion and at least some power to drive the piston back down.
Clearly that cylinder was doing enough to at least smooth out the vibrations and help out a little with power.
I'm going to drive it another day or two before I make a decision on whether to keep it this way.
With the price of gas it would be nice to save fuel and keep it disconnected but if the engine is going to have to work this much harder I worry it'll kill it all the sooner.

Later, just out of curiosity I'll kill #3 too and see what this thing is able to do when it's truly running on two cylinders.

Maybe I can put a switch inline with those two injectors and turn them off once I'm at cruising speed. The extra length and resistance of connections might cause a problem but then it might work to save gas.

 

I wouldn’t bother unless you want to play. Just drive it with everything hooked up.

 

Thanks for the reality check Andy.
I sometimes forget that it's not a good idea to do experiments with the only vehicle you have on the road.
Maybe once I get a second ride back on the road I'll come back to this because I really would like to know.