[brucepick]

Well I started the test - that is, I pulled the valve cover, put two ounces of 5W-20 in each spark plug hole, and cranked it over several times by hand (17 mm. socket on main crank bolt). So far, no differences between cylinders when checking with skinny wood dipstick into spark plug hole.

I'll check again after an hour or so and then later, to see how they drain down. If they don't drain ( !!!! ) I can always suck or siphon out most of the oil.

You definitely hear oil popping as the valves do their job. I'm concerned about oil getting pushed out into the combination exhaust manifold+cat converter. All cylinders went down about 3/16 inch from the first couple hand-cranked engine revolutions. Hopefully that stuff will burn off promptly without wrecking the converter.

So - for anyone contemplating trying this, I recommend:

0) Hand-crank slowly. Oil spurted out the spark plug tube more than once and landed on the manifold.
1) Add only 1 or 1.5 oz. per cylinder.
2) Raise the car's nose ahead of time, sufficiently to have the top surface of cylinder head level in the fore-aft direction in additional to the left-right leveling. (Use a small level.) One reason I put in a whole 2 oz was that I wasn't able to lift the nose enough. I wanted oil contacting the whole ring circle, not just on the downhill end. Apparently the Civic block is canted in the engine bay.
3) Use thinner oil. 0W-20 would not be too thick. The 5W-20 has gone down only 5/16 inch in about 1.5 hours with intermittent hand cranking of engine.