This specialist person has neither experience nor relevant knowledge to this car's issues and nothing he posts has any value. He has in the past been banned several times. I have posted more or less the same warning on many threads as it does the mini community no good if someone who genuinely wants to learn happens upon a post of his and presumes it is from a knowledgeable person.

glad you found the problem, hope you fix it soon and start enjoying your mini.  Have fun, be safe out there mate.

And the winner is "head gasket." Good call, you guys!

Now would be a good time to upgrade for sure.
Before you do that i would do a cylinder leak down test to see where that 20 lbs of compression is going on number 4. Compression's should be in the 10 per cent range of each other that one is just outside that and a leak down test will reveal where the loss is as it could be rings, valves, bores who knows.
I would use the best head gasket you can find along with the best valve guide seals.
Remove all the studs out of the block and make sure it is level and flat by using something perfectly flat and some wet/dry sandpaper along with some lubricant if you are doing it with the engine in the car. Also make sure you get the machine shop to skim the head to make sure that is flat and level, you will see a burn area between the two cylinders you need to remove that with the skim.
You may as well re seat all the valves and check the tolerances on the guides too while you have it apart.

In order to get the starter to actually turn I had to move the car back and forth while in gear. Maybe the starter motor is going bad. Had to move the engine manually between each cylinder tested.  Anyways, i was able to do a compression test. 1-180, 2-0, 3-0 and 4-160. Looks like a head gasket is in my future. It's there any other things I should take care of while I take the head off? Just use a standard gasket or is there an 'upgrade?' Valve stem seals? Does the fact the car has higher compression pistons make a difference? 
Is now the time to upgrade the head and cam?

I put in a new battery and still click....... click........ click. I finally discovered the back plate on the starter was loose. That can't help. Unfortunately I don't have a socket that small so if to the store I go. 

I suspect not. On the other hand, any 30 year old gauge can't be expected to behave as new.

No Smiths gauges are not all like that.

The speedo differences usually occur when an engine and gear box has been replaced with one from a different car. Usually no one bothers to change out the gear ratios for the speedometer. Guessworks is a good site to determine what you have and what you need ratio wise.

Quick update. I had the battery on the charger and it said it was fully charged. I turned the key and the engine turned slowly for a few seconds and then click......click.........click and the gauge on the charger went all the was down to 25% charge. I definitely feel the battery is toast. I need to get a new one. I'll take my old battery with me since the places around here offer free battery testing and i can size a new one up.
Maybe, just maybe that is my problem.?.?.?
Oh and head gaskets. Is this a common problem area on these engines? I know overheating can cause the gasket to blow. I'm a little suspect of my temp gauge as I am my speedo and gas gauge. It will be at 90 and then move to 120 and then somewhere in between and then 90. The PO told me its always been like that and as long as it dose not get abnormally high its okay. True? Are Smith gauges really this wonkey. My speedo gets more accurate the faster I go and at 70 it is dead on but at 25 i'm really doing like 17.
Thanks for all the replies and suggestions

Hmm... I had not considered water in the cylinder(s) causing a slow turn-over. Good call.

If you have water ingress into the cylinder's while it sits a possible slow crank due to the fact that water has a hard time compressing is possible. I think he may have two separate issues one with the electrical and charging the second a possible blown head gasket. If he gets back to us with the compression and charging readings we will be more informed.

I have had alternators fail and in my experience the 1-2-3 will keep the engine running till the battery is almost totally completely dead. I have a hard time connecting the misfire to the poor starter performance without it being a serious valvetrain failure.

For all we know the North Koreans messed up the dash wiring of your car to harsh the vibe here in the western world. Some minis use the green light for both left and right signal indication and the amber lamps are for oil pressure and oil filter bypass switch, while other minis use the amber indicators. No minis were shipped to North Korea so they would not have a large sample to plan their vibe harshing attack. Maybe they just went with bumping the ignition lamp out of its socket. What a bunch of jerks.

I heard that they have spies trained to chew through the head gasket between 2 and 3. They travel only at night, sneak into people's garages and using only a crescent wrench remove the head and use their top teeth to perforate the gasket. Truly diabolical.

Sounds like we have similar issues. I'm convinced my alternator is the culprit. The battery gets deeply discharged when starting and the alt's just not putting enough current back into the battery to keep the 123 dizzy happy. When my engine is running, my dash mounted voltmeter is reading 12.5v or so. Folks here have said that it should be reading around 13.5v. I should mention that I put the battery on a charger each evening and rarely drive more that 25 miles at a time, so the battery stays charged enough. The times I experienced the missing & stalling I had driven 100 miles then ran hard at the track. Result: missing, stalling then no turn-over. After letting everything rest for an hour, I assume the battery recovered and things were back to normal.

Perhaps your 2 dead cylinders were the result of the low battery missing issue? Weird that it would be just those 2 cylinders, though. Mine felt like someone had dumped a bucked of water on the distributor—I doubt I could have pinpointed it to any specific cylinder(s). That's why I initially suspected a bad coil or dizzy. I'm trying a new high-output alternator first, then a new battery if the new alt doesn't solve the problem. Good luck. Oh, and I'm guessing your mileage didn't double when you were running on 2 cylinders. 

I have had the car for over a year and never had a working red light. Maybe it came loose like you said. Actually my amber turn signal indicators in the speedo don't blink when the blinkers are on but the green oil light does for both right and left. I believe the car was upgraded to a 3 pod center dash and maybe the original speedo didn't have separate turn indicators? I'm hoping its a bad battery or alternator causing the 123 to act up. I'll be able to do a compression test tomorrow and post the findings and see what voltage I'm getting from the alternator,

Not an expert—just an interested 3rd party, but head gasket, low compression, and/or valve train issues wouldn't account for the slow starter turnover. Right? You may recall from an earlier thread [link] that Rosebud is/was suffering from an on-again off-again misfiring issue. After reading and considering all of the helpful posts, I'm thinking Rosebud's 123 distributor is suffering from a low battery and perhaps low output from the alternator and that's what's causing my misfire. As pointed out, the 123 dizzy is a bit fussy about it's power supply.

The exhaust leak sound that Derramax described may just be the sound of an A series running on 2 cylinders.

The bulb has to work for the system to charge, sometimes they become dislodged from the socket in the back of the speedo and still work but do not shine through the red lens.
My guess would be head gasket failure also, as suggested do a compression check and get back to us with the numbers.

If you mean the red ignition light then mine has never worked. I assumed the bulb was burned out. 

Head gasket, Oh boy! 

I would suggest you do a compression check too. I once had a problem similar to this. Sounded just like an exhaust leak, but couldn't find any leaks anywhere on the system. Found the problem was the head gasket had blown through between cylinders two and three. 

I would carefully check the valvetrain and then do a compression test before doing anything else.