L134 Rebuild

[Brent in MO]

Hello All! I'm a newby to Henry J's, having just purchased my first one a little over a month ago.  I am intending to keep it stock, and need to rebuild the L135 4 cylinder engine. The engine is not locked up, but one cylinder shows no compression.  I haven't opened it up yet to see if it's a valve or back cylinder.  But I had planned to rebuild the engine anyway, because I want it to be a reliable daily driver.  I'm looking for recommendations as to where to buy the necessary parts?
I'm sure that I'll have more questions as I go along.  I bought my '51 as a basket case, but relatively solid original.

[kfnut]

The Henry J 4 cylinder is the same as Willys Jeep of the same era so parts are plentiful .

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

Before you start a rebuild of any old car engine, you should have the factory's service manual for what you are working on.  The manual for your engine is the 1951-1952-1953 Henry J Shop Manual Kaiser-Frazer put out.  While the 4 cylinder L-head engine is internally the same as the CJ-series and DJ-series jeeps there were some changes made to certain component parts in the Henry J version to improve performance compared to a Jeep.   You should also have the factory parts books to work off of.  Many vendors within the club use the old K-F or Willys part numbers to fill orders so you need to be able to "talk their language".  It helps prevent problems when similar but not the same parts are involved.  The parts info for your car starts with the green cover 1951 Henry J Illustrated Parts list.  the exploded drawings in this book are a great help when trying to identify parts. 

The older engines (regardless of make and model year) are significantly different in design and construction compared to more recent motors.  Take your compression problem in the one cylinder.  having no compression at all (that's what I got out of your initial posting) suggests you may have a warped cylinder head, little or nothing left of the head gasket or there is a crack in the firing wall; things like that happened more often than you might think given the state of engine casting manufacture at the time.   Kaiser-Frazer had various casting issues found after the car was sold (cracks in the block, chips out of the firing chamber walls, issues with cylinder heads, etc) and I have the engineering reports to support that.

[Brent in MO]

I greatly appreciate your insight.  I have already purchased the service manual that you mentioned, but haven't bought the parts book as of yet.  I will do so this week. 
Being a small block Chevy guy all of my life, I am very appreciative of your knowledge in the potential issues with this particular engine.
I plan to take the head off in the next day or so, and start to examine what I have, and what needs to be done.