Engine does not fire on all cylinders - Cars & Trucks

To answer your question what makes a cylinder stop working?
low compression, caused by one3 or more of the following,
burnt or cracked valve
blown head gasket
cracked head
hole in piston (accompanied by loud noises and excessive smoke)
a broken valve spring
broken roker arm
collapsed or worn lifter
worn timming chain or belt (this is usually not consistant toward dropping one hole instead it will effect all at once or the cylinder that is dead will be good one second and bad the next)
those are hard mechanical failures next youve got your tune-up related reasons for a cylinder to fail.
bad distributor rotor,cap, sparkplug wire or spark plug
sometimes the distributor itself
a vacuum leak in the vacinity of the cylinder that is failing
a bad intake manifold gasket
or a cracked intake manifold
a defective fuel injector