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Hi All,
First, thanks for your help in allowing me to get the head off my Civic!

Here's the quick story, skip down if you would like to just provide input.

I have a stock 2000 Civic LX. Was getting misfire codes on all cylinders. Car was running rough and then running ok. Occasionally white smoke would come out of the exhaust smelling like coolant and I was losing just a little bit of coolant. So - head gasket right?

Nope. Pulled the head off today and the gasket is in good shape. What I did notice was a ton of crud in the intake manifold and around the injectors. I suspect there is a coolant leak somewhere in the intake manifold.

I've attached pics of the intake manifold and the pistons. It looks like there is more crud in Cyl4.

Rather than mess with trying to find the problem and going through all the cleaning, I'm thinking of just replacing the intake manifold.

My questions:
* Where could the leak in the intake manifold be?
If I replace the intake manifold, I am looking to get it back up and running and not looking to do any serious mods. Even another Honda IM would be ok. That being said:
* Opinions on the Skunk 2?
* Opinions on just the el cheapo?
* Should I just head to a junkyard and look for a replacement mani?
* Try to clean it? It looks pretty well baked in.

Thanks for any/all advice!

 
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upclose picture of the crud!

 
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If you wanted to clean it you could take it to a machine shop and have them hot dip it for you, that would get it completely clean for a relatively low cost.

If you want to upgrade your intake I would suggest going with the d16y8, everything ever made by skunk2 is overpriced and poor quality in my opinion.

 
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Thanks for the input on Skunk 2 MindBomber. I found some stock manis on Ebay, so I'll probably head that direction. The head is headed to the machine shop tomorrow.

I'm leery about cleaning up the mani without knowing what caused it. Any ideas on what may cause that type of junk?

 
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Update!

Finished replacing head gasket. The machine shop offered to clean my intake mani So it's now clean and I'm sticking with it!

From reading other topics, it appears this is pretty common. I also replaced the PCV valve (what a pain!). Hopefully this keeps it in check, but I suspect it will build up again.

Completed the timing as well. Car runs well. My only complaint so far is sometimes the idle will drop to <500 rpms. Still looking into this one...

 
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good luck, could not find the answer to that...

 
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just part of the combustion process. mine was the same way when i pulled the head to replace the gaskets. engines are just dirty.

 
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Yeah. I remember having to change my PCV valve on my Si. I did not like that at all. What a terrible location. Seems Honda likes to put stuff in the worst possible location to make you go insane. Glad to hear your car is doing better.