MamaBear2015

We started having coolant loss problems over the summer. The AC would quit and then the engine temp started going up. We added coolant and it was ok for a month, then started happening again. Our mechanic did a pressure test and couldn't find a leak, and checked for exhaust gases in the coolant and didn't find any, nor did they smell any coolant in the exhaust pipe.

They replaced the radiator, but it kept happening, about once a month.

Then in the fall, it's been happening with the heater. It won't start putting out hot air until the car is fully warmed up AND on the highway.

So he suggested that, because it must be an extremely slow leak and we don't want the expense of tearing the engine apart to change seals, we should try some liquid aluminum, which would likely seal a tiny slow leak, possibly permanently.

So he put that in last week. The problem is, the heater is still doing the same thing now, and I just checked the coolant level and it appeared ok. Maybe down a little but not much.

But it won't start putting out hot air until the car is fully warmed up AND on the highway. ( it used to start warming the air within 2 blocks of driving )

Is there some kind of heater control valve that may be old and need replacing, in this model?

Colin42

It could be the head gasket, did he do the cylinder pressure test with shop air? (See the overheating sticky for more info)
https://www.civicforums.com/forums/3...reference.html

That stop leak stuff may have caused a whole host of other headaches for you

MamaBear2015

I don't know, but these are the best mechanics I've ever found, and the only ones I consider competent, honest and affordable. I don't fully understand that thread ( I'm far from a mechanic - I change my own plugs and air filters ) but I do know we had the thermostat changed last winter when the car seemed to be taking a long time to warm up. That problem still happens though.

How so?

He first spoke of "liquid glass" and then it turned out that they used Bars Stop Leak, whatever that was.

Colin42

If you show your mechanic the video ezone made thats in the thread of how to do the test im sure he would be able to replicate it

Because that is going to gum up the entire cooling system including the heater core, there was a thread in the forum a while ago where some put stop leak in and it caused them all sorts of grief

NDNV

Lack of heat output from the heater was my first indicator of a failed head gasket. I did have the litmus test done on the exhaust gases in the coolant and it was positive though.


I would still look into a failed HG with a pressure test of cylinders.
These engines are notorious for failed HGs.

MamaBear2015

We've been having a very slow oil drip in the driveway too. They say it's from the valve cover? It's not even leaking a quart lower between oil changes, so it's just annoying to see in the driveway.

Plus, we're not exactly sure if the previous owner was being honest when he said the timing belt had been changed. He said it had been, before we bought the car, and then wouldn't give us the receipts. I had to nag him, and he finally faxed me a receipt that says it was changed for a 2002 Civic DX, and it's printed on the back of a parts order receipt from another job. Very fishy.

So I'm wondering if we should just pay for the valve cover gasket replacement and the head gasket, and they can look at the timing belt and see if it's ever been changed. The car has 130k miles on it now. Making me nervous.

But I'm guessing all that will cost us about $1000.

ezone

Nobody will be able to accurately guess the age/miles of a timing belt unless it's brand spanking new (lettering is still fresh and spotlessly clean)--- or so old it's about to break (deep weather cracking).
After the timing belt has been installed and run for 100-1000 miles, all the way up until the end of it's normal service life (100,000 miles) its visual appearance doesn't really change much.


Oil seeps and oozes on a 15 year old car aren't the end of the world. If it's not causing real harm and not leaking so fast you can't keep ahead of the loss rate, many people don't bother fixing as it's not worth the expense, or it's included in another more urgent repair (head gasket job).

There are also a few other common oil leak items at that mileage.
Front seals, VTEC solenoid gaskets (there are two), cam plug, to name a few.

IF the head gasket is proven to be at fault and is going to be replaced, the timing belt should be only minimal additional expense as it's going to be partway disassembled to replace the cylinder head gasket. Basically, the part cost plus a little extra labor. Ask your mechanic for a complete estimate.


IF you are going to have the head gasket job performed by someone, there will probably be more gaskets needed to do the work than just the head gasket itself and a valve cover gasket set.
The work entails much more disassembly than the name of the basic job would seem to imply.

MamaBear2015

OK thanks Ezone. Well the most frustrating problem now, remains the coolant loss. They put in the liquid aluminum 2 weeks ago, and I just had to add coolant again, to get the heater working right again. When I was driving down slope into downtown Denver on Saturday, I had almost no heat at all, and up slope on the way back, I did.

Very frustrating. The mechanic mentioned that it might be being caused by those seals inside the Vtec. But they've done several tests. This car is SO frustrating and expensive. I bought it for $4000 and must have $10k in it now, and still all these problems.

ezone

Oh hell I forgot about some of this stuff you've posted about this car..

VTEC has zero to do with coolant loss. Not possible.


I think you mean "Liquid Glass". At any rate, that's a hack repair IMO.

This should have been a simple head gasket job if it had been done right the first time. Maybe not cheap to do it right the first time, but certainly cheaper than what it will take to make it right now.



Your previous cars seemed to be bottomless money pits....did you take them to the same mechanics?

MamaBear2015

I don't know about this stuff. Something about front seals inside the engine?

It says on the bill: BARS Stop Leak. We don't have much money, so I guess they figured it was worth a try. We STILL don't know the exact cause. They pressure tested the cooling system more than once, and tested the coolant for exhaust gases and found none. And they didn't smell coolant in the tail pipe.

How so?

Not previous cars - THIS ONE. We bought it for $4k around August 2015, and it needed a transmission for $2500 within 5 months. Plus other stuff. I have no idea how much we actually have in it, I guess I'm just frustrated. But I'm guessing about $10k now.

In my line of work ( Process Server, so I drive all over town all week. ) , it's hard on cars anyway, but this car was an emergency buy. By December 2014, Denver had grown from 2 to 3 million people and traffic was getting more like LA. We'd been in 4 accidents and totaled 4 cars by 7 of 2015. "Totaled", mostly because they were low cost cars to begin with, like $4000 Corollas.

So by August of 2015, we were running out of insurance car rental money, which only covered a few weeks after the last accident, and were still dealing with some injury stuff, and needed a car fast. This is the only car we've bought, without having it checked out, at least ( which doesn't always find everything anyway ).

But this mechanic happens to be the best we've ever found. The only one I've ever found who is honest, extremely competent and affordable.

I was actually dreading a potential $1000 repair job, so he suggested that BARS Stop Leak ( is it liquid glass? I don't know. ), hoping that because it's a very tiny leak ( about half a gallon a month? ) it might actually fix it?

ezone

VTEC operates by controlling oil flow through passages in the head and valvetrain. It has nothing to do with coolant in any way.

The lack of heater output (at low engine RPM) is normally caused by low coolant level in the radiator.
The root cause of that low coolant level is usually either an external coolant leak or a blown head gasket.
A head gasket problem is much more common and expected on this engine IMO.
Most people don't correctly diagnose the blown head gasket on these engines on the first try because it doesn't exhibit any of the "typical" symptoms most people would think to look for or test for. Many will try replacing everything else they can think of that might cause an engine to run hot.....to no avail, because the root cause isn't fixed.

Bars produces a variety of cooling system stop leak products. I figured you wrote 'liquid glass' on one reply then 'liquid aluminum' on another and automatically assumed it's liquid glass Sodium silicate (link) without checking more about it. Looking further, 'Bars liquid aluminum' is not the product I was thinking of. This appears to be a more basic stop leak not intended to address head gasket problems, but to slow or stop external cooling system leakage.
I expect it has the potential to cause clogging of small passages though.
Continued and/or repeated engine operation while the cooling system fluid level is too low, running hotter than usual or overheating the engine can cause further damage such as making the blown head gasket problem worse, warping the cylinder head, shortening the life of rubber and nylon engine parts (hoses and radiator, gaskets, etc.) and more depending on the severity of the situation and whether or not coolant is entering the cylinders.



Well that explains the 10k figure now. I understand the frustration, but that doesn't make the current problem less significant nor cheaper. A shop charging $1k for a head gasket job is cheap IMO. I certainly hope they send the head to a machinist to be measured for warpage and resurfaced if necessary.

MamaBear2015

I understand what you're saying, but is the proper term for coolant loss, at the rate of about half a gallon a month, a "blown" head gasket, or more like a tiny seeping one?

ezone

A proper term for coolant loss would be coolant loss.

Other names may be assigned after the root cause of the coolant loss is determined.

MamaBear2015

Someone mentioned that the water pumps in these cars frequently have "weeping" problems ( slow seeping leaks ), which could account for everything, and the fact that my mechanic's tests haven't found the problem yet.

Is it easy or difficult to inspect the water pump in these cars?

I found a video saying that they usually change the water pump at the same time as the timing belt, so it sounds like it may not be so easy.

ezone

Probably ought to establish what exactly is causing your complaint, then you can figure out why it's happening.


When the heater output is cool at idle, is the radiator level found to be low?
And at that time-- where is the level of the coolant reservoir?

Does refilling the radiator restore heater operation? (at least for a while)
And where is the level of the reservoir when you do this?


How many miles and how much time elapses between events?

MamaBear2015

Yes, yes and yes. It takes about 10 days after I fill it, to have heater problems again. My mechanic has tried a pressure test of the coolant ( nada ), testing the coolant for exhaust gases ( nada ) and smelling the tail pipe for burned coolant ( nada ). So it's a very slow seeping leak, what someone suggested might be the "weeping water pumps" they tend to see in this model.

ezone

What happens to the liquid level in the white plastic reservoir?
Does it disappear, remain half full, or overflow?

MamaBear2015

Remains full. I have to open the radiator cap, turn the heat on full, let the car warm up until the thermostat opens, and THEN fill the radiator, each time, about every 10 days. Getting tired of it.

They tried a new radiator, for $460 and did those tests.

Colin42

Have you tried bleeding out the system with the nose of the car elevated?
If you're adding coolant with the t-stat open, depending on how low the level is and how the car is sitting you might be adding air into the system

ezone

How full? The full line is only half way up the bottle.

The cooling system is designed to pull liquid out of the reservoir if the radiator level drops, the vacuum created inside the radiator (during cooldown or if a small external leak develops) sucks liquid from the reservoir, thereby keeping the radiator completely filled at all times.

Two possible problems that defeat this design come immediately to my mind:
a) a leak between the radiator and reservoir, including the radiator/pressure cap/small hose (think of a pinhole in a drinking straw that leaks air when you suck on it)
or
b) the very common leaking head gasket problem that pressurizes the cooling system.




As I have said many times before, this engine will usually pass every head gasket check most people think of..........until the problem becomes so huge and obvious that anyone can figure it out.


Too many people run around in circles wasting time and money replacing everything they can think of that might make the car lose coolant or overheat EXCEPT the head gasket, complete denial because it passes all the usual checks.

See this thread:https://www.civicforums.com/forums/3...reference.html

Just about everything you could want to know about the problem is in the first post.

The 11 minute video shows in real time how I prove the very common (yet hard to find) head gasket problem in the shop on the 1.7 engine. Maybe your mechanics would like to see how it's done.

MamaBear2015

Our driveway is elevated, so the car has been pointed front-up at about a 35 degree angle as I do this.

MamaBear2015

BUT the very first thing he says is:

The top culprit is: the head gasket going out. It will slowly let the combustion gases pass through the gasket to the coolant.
What then happens?
1) The gases will heat the coolant
2) The gases will create bubbles inside the engine, reducing heat transfer
3) The gases will push the collant out of the reservoir.

AND my mechanic did a coolant pressure test AND a test of the coolant for exhaust gases, both negative.

ezone

Your mechanic has not done the test shown in my 11 minute video.




Passing all of his tests doesn't mean all is well with your engine, it just means he isn't doing the test that will prove the problem.

MamaBear2015

Thanks Ezone. I'm passing that on to him.

I quit going to Midas years ago, because they used the shotgun approach and cost me about $600 the last time, to replace something that didn't fix the problem. So diagnosis is critical.

MamaBear2015

You just mentioned this again in the air cleaner thread. I faxed him about it and he didn't call me or reply. He's been a good mechanic - the best one I've found in many years - and I don't want him getting insulted if I push this too hard.

But yeah, I need to find out.

There have been other things going on with this engine too, and this car has cost us way too much already, with the transmission rebuilt being needed last January, and all this.

I think he said it's a valve cover gasket that's been very slowly dripping oil in the driveway since we got this car, or it could be some kinds of seals that he mentioned ( I forget what he said ).

Then someone else mentioned that a water pump could be slowly "weeping" and causing this, and that they're always replaced along with the timing belt.

I asked him how much it might cost to do the valve cover gasket, the water pump and timing belt and the head gasket, and he said that they still weren't sure about some kind of front or back seals being the cause of the leak?

Anyway, it looks like around $2000 for all that, which we're wincing at the thought of.

The car was $4000 in August 2015, the transmission rebuilt was $2500, plus assorted repairs so far.

ezone

Forget worrying about their feelings. Business is business and you have a broken car that needs fixed.
You have a problem they can't seem to or aren't interested in figuring out.....Find someone who can figure this out if your shop can't.

Not everyone has a ton of experience with the quirks of this particular engine....but the test method in my video is not anything extraordinary.
I only made the video to show how quickly that test can prove the problem.


So you SEE oil spots on the driveway....don't you think that if there was antifreeze leaking (a quart every week) you would see puddles of that in the driveway too? Do you see drips or puddles of (green or blue) antifreeze?

Valve cover gasket replacement will be included in the head gasket job ----unless someone cuts corners on the job.

$2000 seems a little high but I can't see an itemized estimate. A head gasket job on this engine in the dealer shop I work for could run around $1200-1800 depending on how much extra has to be included, timing belt and tensioner and all those parts drive the price up. A bare bones head gasket job with ONLY the bare minimum needed to accomplish that might run a grand, unless the head has to be resurfaced.
Price estimates will vary widely with many variables.

Gotta keep it rolling...Otherwise, a 2800 pound paperweight is only worth about 10 cents per pound at the scrap yard.

MamaBear2015

Good point.

Thanks.

Nope. And that oil drip is so little that it doesn't even get down 1 quart every 3000 miles. The coolant leak must be an extremely tiny seep.

Thanks.

Yeah, he's talking about resurfacing ( I think he said around $450 for that ) and the timing belt and water pump. Now this guy is honest enough where, if it doesn't need resurfacing, he wouldn't charge me. He likes to look good for being that honest.

Yeah, I know. I was told that when we paid $4000 for it and the transmission quit 8 months later. And a used Corolla of 2002 model year, is around $11k in good condition.

It's one of these cases of "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know". If I sold this car, just to get rid of it, I could perfectly well buy another that would need a ton of similar repairs in a year or so.

One thing I'm wondering about, and I don't know about this model and engine, is that I've seen completely rebuilt engines on Ebay for around $1100 with shipping. But then you need someone inexpensive and COMPETENT who can swap it for you.

ezone

"An extremely tiny seep" is not going to guzzle a quart of antifreeze each week.

I'm probably the one who said it.


I'm awful leery of everything like that.

You can buy these engines used for 500 or less, all day long.



Those terms would seem to be mutually exclusive.

MamaBear2015

Well it's not like it's blowing all over the place.


Used, but not rebuilt? I see both on Ebay.

This one - the seller has 23000 feedbacks at 100%:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Honda-01-05-...8v-NPg&vxp=mtr

ezone

Does coolant actually disappear????
Have you witnessed antifreeze leaking?
Or is this all speculation because someone suggested it "could leak from" various places an engine could leak....without any proof?


Get off of ebay and look at real options. If you really want a rebuilt unit, look for a local rebuilder to do your engine or a nationally recognized source such as Jasper....who can offer a real and nationwide warranty.....but even they have occasional bad apples that slip through.

I don't think anybody can offer a QUALITY rebuild for that (too low) price. I'd expect halfass work and cheapest parts possible for that price.
A quick google search for "jis engine reviews" revealed just what I expected to see on the first forum I found. No bueno. Stay away.


http://forums.nicoclub.com/jis-auto-engine-t389725.html

Personally, I'd either fix the engine you already have or drop in a good used engine from a reliable source.