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well, as far as compressing air goes, it really doesn't do that. because each cylinder is totally closed, what happens instead is that each piston alternates between compression and vacuum. There is bound to be some losses associated with that. But those losses aren't nearly as bad as you might think.
as far as creating an imbalance in the engine,it's up to you to decide whether you can live with it. Many years ago, I was fortunate enough to own a 1949 Chevy pickup truck with a five cylinder engine. It was really a six cylinder. Anyway, I had the old thing for about a couple of years, and never noticed anything really different about it. But for some reason I decided to do the old spark plugs test. You know, the one where you pulled the plug wires one at a time. Anyway, I noticed that the fifth cylinder didn't seem to be firing. After some more testing, I pulled the valve cover, and saw that someone had taken the push rods out. So I went down to the salvage yard, got another couple of push rods. When I put them back in, the engine ran terrible, it was backfiring through the carburetor. What had happened was: the exhaust lobe of the cam had been ground off, so someone before me and simply taken the easy way out, and pulled the push rods. So, I simply pulled them back out again, and drove it for another couple or three years until it finally went to standard iron. I don't remember why it died, but he didn't have anything to do with the fifth cylinder..
A lot of the engines in the past ran with unbalanced power strokes. Harley Davidson and John Deere come to mind.
Best wishes, Tom .
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