MC70

TL;DR:
Found a cheap car ($400). Runs, drives, and looks surprisingly good. Has some mild cosmetic damage that can be dealt with. Mis-timed. The cooling system exploded (still normal operating temperatures). Gonna fix it up because I have so little invested.

Blahblahblahblahblah:

Howdy y'all. I was looking for an inexpensive car for my youngest son's girlfriend (we've pretty much adopted her into the family). In my search I came upon a silver 2000 Civic EX 2dr Coupe with just over 200k on the clock, in surprisingly good condition for the $400 I paid. It seems pretty well loaded; PM, PW, AT, AC, power mirrors, power moonroof, tilt steering... I don't know what options were available so I'm not sure what's standard and what isn't.

The passenger front fender is pushed in, and the hood took a hit with no damage to any internal structure and the headlights appear to be matched originals (using some deduction on yellowing when comparing the two). The power mirror switch is dead, and the driver's power window motor isn't working (the window is stuck about 1/4 down).

The car starts and runs well. How it drives is a different matter. The prior owner said he drove the car for years, gave it to his daughter, and she drove it for years until the timing belt broke on the way home one day. He tried to replace it and is convinced he didn't get the mechanical timing done correctly. I agree. It will move up to about 15mph perfectly normally but doesn't want to shift correctly thereafter (as if vacuum, CAS, and TPS are arguing with eachother), and when there's a high vacuum load it just sort of... flatlines, power-wise, and you can really smell it running rich.

It does run though, and we did manage to coax it up to 65mph. The chassis felt solid (though needs new shocks) without any odd vibration or pulls. I was impressed. I do have a spare 4 door version of the same year available to me that I can probably get for $100 which doesn't seem to have these problems, has 30K fewer miles, but has suffered some significant front end damage (nothing reaches the engine).

It is a relatively considerate car. It seems to be trying hard. It waited until after we'd driven it around and I was quite literally pulling into the parking area in my drive when we heard a loud bang and what I initially thought was smoke. It turns out it was steam and something had blown apart in the cooling system, but if I trust the water temp gauge everything was operating well within limits; it appears to be a pressure failure. A new aluminum radiator is on its way, along with a timing kit and all the filters, etc. from Amazon. I'll head back out today to really investigate the coolant issue, but the radiator was a greenish brown, and if it follows suit with the Miata radiators, that indicates it is on borrowed time. No harm replacing it in any event.

So there ya go. I'd post up pics but I don't have any yet, and quite frankly it just looks like every other slightly beat silver Honda Civic coupe. Nothing to see here... LOL

ezone

Welcome

If it lunched a timing belt prior and someone 'fixed' it, I'd first pull the top timing cover and check that the belt install is actually timed correctly.

Then run a compression test. If compression is low, then run a leakdown test.

Also know that those do blow head gaskets, they typically dump pressure into the cooling system instead of all the things normal people look for.

MC70

Thanks! And that's for sure going to happen. He said he was pretty sure he didn't get it timed correctly; he said it ran perfectly prior to that, and frankly he didn't have any reason to lie to me and he lives so close that I doubt he'd be comfortable doing so even if he wanted to.

I'm not even going to bother. It runs well enough and I have a spare engine.

I suppose it is possible. That tank was old and weak; it didn't owe anyone anything. I'm amazed at how small that thing is. The Miata has a tank more than twice as large. I don't see any evidence of the telltale head gasket issues; no oil in the coolant or white smoke out of the tailpipe. The tank did indeed crack open.

I'll dig into it sooner than later, but man... There isn't any space in there at all!

Oh that's the plan

ezone

This is exactly what I meant when I said "instead of all the things normal people look for".


You'll almost never see one of these engines with a MLS head gasket exhibit "typical" head gasket symptoms unless the problem becomes extreme, like it overheated severely and the head warped.


Typical for this engine is simply leaking combustion pressure into the cooling system, and it slowly pushes some of the coolant out of the radiator.....At that point it may either overheat (hot weather) or lose heater output (cold weather).

In very early stages of failure where leakage is very slow, even the trusted block checkers with the blue liquid usually can't detect the leakage.



If your replacement engine has miles and unknown history on it, it might be a good idea to slap a head gasket on it before you drop it in the car.
I think there's plenty of space to work compared to some other cars, but it's still a lot easier to do while it's out on the bench IMO.


And the heater hose that's under the distributor, replace it if it is oil soaked and fix the oil leaks.

HTH