Dreamcivic23

My girlfriend has a 92 civic hatch and her head gasket went out a week ago and I don't know if it's worth fixing when the engine has 220k on it. What should I do?

GolNat

iTrader: (7)

Is the rest of the car in good shape? Burn a lot of oil? Body falling apart? It's cheaper to fix a gasket then buy a new car if the car is in good shape.

Dreamcivic23

I replaced a lot of stuff on the car. It ran fine and the body is okay. I just didn't want to do all that work and then it blow again for something else because it has high miles.

GolNat

iTrader: (7)

Has it blown before? If it's the first time you can expect another 220k out of it, which is very good.

If your spending more a month to keep it running then I would consider a new car.

Dreamcivic23

That's the first time it happened. Once she bought it I have kept great maintenance on it.

brags

don't no if this is auto or stick? but you said the body is fine, so if the trany
was good up to this point and your absolutely sure it just needs a headgasket well.. on a 92 civic its not terribly expensive to do.. as long as the job is properly done right. I don't see why not go for it. hey its a Honda they go for ever.

Dreamcivic23

Yeah the tranny is good it shifts fine. Now is if I wanted to get alittle more power out of it could I just switch the head out? It's just a d15y7

iim1rmg

A headgasket on this car is not all that hard if you have fair to middlin wrenching skills.

You would of course do water-pump and timing belt while you are at it, and if there is any oil leak at all, a front seal is easy to change while you are there. Actually, with over 200k on the engine, it would be a good idea anyway.

Some things to consider before you start:

When the head gasket went, did the car overheat? If so, was it allowed to get really hot and stay that way? If yes, you might easily have a cracked or damaged head as well as a bad head gasket. You will want to have the head checked and at least do a valve job with new seals while it is off.

In any case, nothing lost by pulling the head to see what you have, then going from there.

Have the machine shop surface the head including the manifold surfaces and use new manifold gaskets when reassembling.

If you have done head gaskets jobs before you already know this, but be sure to run a thread chaser down the head bolt holes to make sure they are clean and be very careful that any oil or cleaning fluid is not left in the holes as the "fluid lock" can mess up your torque on the head bolts. Be sure to exactly follow the torque setting procedure.

If all that's wrong is a head gasket (likely) and you do the other preventative maintenance things you should do while you are at, it should provide many more reliable miles of use.

Don't forget to set the engine at TDC - top dead center for #1 before you start reassembly - it helps to do it before you start dis-assembly.

It's always a good time to do a new set of NGK or Denso plugs and wires, distributor cap/rotor and a general tune up while you are at it.

Good luck