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Background:
About 6 months ago my civic died of a head gasket failure and oil in the coolant. I sent it into a shop to be fixed because doing that kind of repair on my daily myself scared me. They came back and told me that my camshaft had marks on it so basically I'd need a whole new engine head. They then called a few scrap yards around them and found that all the available engine heads had the same markings that mine did, so he quoted me upwards of $2,000 for a brand new head from Honda. Seeing as this is a relatively clean, but far from perfect 17 year old car with 240k miles, I chickened out, had it towed home, and it's been sitting in my yard ever since with the engine disassembled under the hood.

Questions:
---Is this a futile project?
-The car has a ton of new stuff and was the perfect driving machine before it died. A whole lot of love and care went into making it run perfectly and it did so without a hiccup before it overheated (never red-line overheated, maybe 3/4th of the temp gauge before I pulled over and had it towed to the shop).
-The engine components have been exposed to the weather more or less. The hood was always closed, but the bare engine block was exposed underneath the hood for probably close to 5 or 6 months through the cold and snow, as well as everything else in there. Will it ever run again?
-I'm going to try to do this without removing the engine block, Is that possible? Does it need to be machined too?
---If not, where do I start?
-I have everything that came from the car when it was running all piled up in a box in the front seat of the car.
-Should I try to use as much of this as I can? or should I try to find a complete engine head to use?
-I Have a buddy with another disassembled Y8 engine head which might have better components than mine, but his had more miles (300k) vs mine with 240k. Should I mix and match?

In conclusion:
I am fairly experienced with a wrench, on this car in particular, but this is BY FAR the most complicated and involved thing I've ever attempted. (I haven't even taken a valve cover off before for fear of messing something up) but I figure now that I have a daily driver I have nothing but a couple bucks to loose by trying my best to save my first car. I know I will be relying a lot of these forums and my friends to figure out what I'm doing, so I thank anyone on here who's willing to take their time to tell me my *** from my elbows. Here goes nothing!

 
Rep Power: 518

Google search 'cylinder head exchange'

Also, salvage yard search: www.car-part.com

 
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Thank you, I had no idea about that possibility. Do I need to have my block resurfaced? If I found a good engine head, got it resurfaced, could I just put that on the block with some new studs and a gasket and be good to go?

 
Rep Power: 518

I can't say never, but I've never seen one need it.
The cylinder head suffers the most damage from overheating, it warps.




Here's my problem with your post:
So if others also show the same, whatever they found may be normal for the engine? What exactly were these "marks" they found?

How about warpage of the head, is it warped? How much is it warped?

Was it running when you took the car to the shop? How well did it run at that time?

What happened to cause oil in the coolant, did it overheat? At that time, was the engine pushed until it died?

 
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The machine shops described the marks on my camshaft and rockers as "gouges from lack of lubrication" maybe some ******** before me forgot to put oil in it and drove it around the block or something. My problem with what they said is the fact that the car performed perfectly before it was taken in (I've driven it more than a year, and on many long long road trips). I told the mechanic that I can't imagine my head was warped a little if it at all, it only got maybe 3/4th up the temp gauge before I shut the car off, topped it off with coolant, and drove it to the shop (10-15 minutes) without any overheating. They decided that the head gasket was bad because of a test they performed that tested for oil in the coolant, aka a head gasket leak between the two passages. I accepted this because I had put in a new radiator and flushed the coolant a few months earlier, so I was fairly confident there wouldn't have been any other problems with the cooling system

Here's a quote from my email correspondence with the mechanic that was working on my car.



"Here is what we are dealing with, the cam lobe that is up is scored (see the scratches and blue/rainbow color) it should look like the lobes next to it with just sort of a medium shine on them no scratches and no bluing.
The machine shop said yours has multiple lobes that look like this. They said the camshaft and rocker arms are very worn the machine shop said the cam lobes are scored and blue from heat and the same with the rocker arms. The machine shop has not seen anything like that before, he suspects it got very hot."

 
Rep Power: 518

If you found a good head, it wouldn't need resurfaced.

If you found a used head that is warped and needs resurfaced, that head has been overheated.

If you get a used head, it needs to be measured for flatness before installation and IF it's beyond the .0.002" max warp limit THEN it gets resurfaced, if possible.

This doesn't matter.

The head needs to be measured for warpage. That tells someone like me just how hot it got. (pass or fail)



"Oil in the coolant" isn't the usual failure.....at least not until long after the head is seriously warped.

You probably would have seen oil in the coolant when you removed the radiator cap and filled it....Did you?
(oil floats on top of water)

And it was running fine like that.....


Don't you have the car, the cylinder head, and the camshaft and rockertrain there at home now, and you can inspect it all? Can you confirm what they are trying to tell you?

Post more pics?

 
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I found a used head near me, I plan to get it inspected by a machine shop before it goes on the car


I can't say I did. When I got the car there was a weird slimy dark residue all over the inside of the overflow tank but nothing floating in the water. I imagine now it was someone's attempt at stop leak when the first signs of a problem showed up. Ugh.

But yes, the car ran perfectly (until it was disassembled by the shop) with plenty of power. This makes me think that the machine shop was being over dramatic to say the least, or it's just a testament to Honda build quality, that even an engine as abused as this could run for hundreds of thousands of miles with no signs of neglect.

Yes I have all the parts, I looked at the camshaft and yes there were some marks on it, but to my unqualified eyes it didn't seem like anything that couldn't have kept the engine going for another hundred thousand miles. So to me it sounds like greedy mechanics ready to condemn a car before it's time. I can maybe post some pictures later tonight Thank you so much for your input ezone!!

 
Rep Power: 518

That seems to be somewhat common as they age.

Some wear at 240k might be expected? I can't tell from here yet.
What's the corresponding follower (rocker arm) wheel look/feel//spin/wobble like?
(FWIW some of the cam lobe issues I have seen in other newer engines have been blamed on improper hardening processes when the cam was made.)

Maybe they were just covering their butts in case the wear they noticed became a bigger problem....you know, most consumers will automatically blame the last person/mechanic/shop whom touched the car when something new goes wrong.


OTOH, maybe someone took the head/cam/rockers all apart and lost some small but critical pieces...

 
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Haha maybe so, I'll try and inspect the rocker arms later but I'm not sure it'll lead me to anything conclusive, after all I'm not worried about going after the shop or anything like that, my focus is mainly just getting this car running again well enough to be my daily.

I found another y8 head supposedly in good condition sorta near me so my plan so far is:
-pick the new head up,
-have it inspected for warpage / refinished,
-put it in the car with new head gasket and studs,
-figure out the timing and belts
-fill it up with fluids and start it.

I know that's a crude way of describing a delicate detailed process but can you think of anything else I'd need or anything I haven't considered about that? I have questions about making sure the timing is spot on but I can probably find more info on that if I searched harder. Thanks again for there help!

 
Rep Power: 518

I'm sure there are some DIY threads here about head gaskets and timing belts, and you can probably find service manuals too.
My preference is head gasket from a Honda dealership.

Reuse the head bolts. No need to replace unless something is actually broken.

EDIT: I'm sure more will be needed such as both manifold gaskets and whatnot, you will discover as you progress

 
Rep Power: 229

Those guys are full of ****, there is no way they didn't find a good cam shaft. I doubt even with the marks on the camshaft you have, you would even need to replace yours (take it to a shop and polish it if you're worried about metal shavings rubbing off).

The cam shaft just rotates and pushes down on the valve assembly, as long as it can do that you're fine.

The reason bearings are replaced on other parts like the piston rods is that if those are too scratched grim can build up and grind away material which is bad for a part that is shot up and down with tremendous force at 7000rpm. If the play becomes too large, then while rotating the play in rod bearings can cause rod failure.

Camshafts on the other hand just rotate.

 
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Interesting, thanks for the insight! The way they explained it was that as the cam lobe became more worn and more material was ground away, it would eventually not open the valve less and less and make the car perform worse until it wouldn't work anymore. Seems far fetched to me but I didn't know better at the time

 
Rep Power: 518

Post some pics of it so we all can see it