hayden55

Hows it going guys!
So i've being driving my Civic as my DD for the last 5 weeks ive owned it and ive put 1900 miles on it (161k now on the odometer). The car runs smooth and i've taken all the data and its averaging 39.2mpg from 50/50 mileage and gps calculated. So the car has gasket problems around the pan / crank and it leaks so oil consumption has been regular with the car not bad but its 1/10 of a quart a week. The first three weeks i had the car i changed the oil, plugs, filter, and the plugs look liked they had never been changed and were erroded and had carbon build up like crazy, but once i changed everything it didn't smoke, ran fine, never even gets to the boat on the heat gauge, and i basically drive it like a diesel and oil consumption was minimal (possibly from leakage). So i check the oil and in the last week it had consumed a little under 2 quarts of oil with very few miles. Yesterday i had a trip to make right at 392 miles so i filled the oil up to the top dot on the stick, checked all the fluids, and tires, and i was ready to go. Drove there 196 miles, drove around town running errands for 3 hours, then i went left. About 140 miles in i get stuck in traffic for 40 minutes, and 20 minutes in the car just really starts to sound like it has a fart pipe and you can really hear the exhaust so im freaking out but the car isnt getting hot and running fine and i cant really smell anything so I drive 10 miles to the next town and check the oil and it was barely on the stick. So I drive home very slowly babying it get into my driveway let it sit and cool and drain the oil and about 2 quarts of oil out of it. So in 400 miles it looks to of consumed about 1.5 quarts of oil. Car was cold and i added maybe 4 oz of dist. water to the coolant, and smelling the oil its the typical black but it does smell like gasoline very well. Car still starts fine amd we did a compression test just incase. Pulled the Fuel injection fuse, distributor plug, spark plugs, stick the throttle open, and did a dry test. Also Spark plugs seem slightly oily but clean. Numbers:
1: 110psi
2: 155psi
3: 157psi
4: 161psi
Then wet with a couple pumps of oil to seal things off.
1: 180psi
2: 215psi
3: 255psi
4: 255psi

Numbers seem kinda high and it looks like the motor is fine but the low cylinders being beside each other makes me think head gasket...
Also i changed the oil the first time and it was straight black with no water in it (coolant is straight water from flushing with no EG in it).

Building a leak down tester tommorrow possibly because its not a very complex test to do or should i just do the head gasket asap.
Sorry for the long post but i figured for the masters here the more info for the diagnose the better.
1996 Honda Civic LX 5mt d16y7 161k miles

ezone

Gas in the oil will cook itself out when the oil is heated for a long time, I can see this causing some of the (appearance of) rapid sudden oil loss.
PLUS you have no idea how long the old oil was in there?



See how the consumption goes now that it has a fresh oil change.

Sounds like you should be checking the oil level every 100 miles or every gas fill up, so it can be refilled long before it gets low enough to be a problem.


I'd expect 180+ with my gauge.
I don't see a head gasket here. I see #1 screaming low.

Do the compression test on a hot engine,
Keep cranking it until the gauge is maxxed out.
Is #1 still that low?
Valve adjustment first (cold engine), then run it and recheck compression again (hot engine). If it's still low then do the leakdown checks to see where the leakage may be.