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Car: 2001 Honda Civic EX 136k miles

Problem: The front end of the car seemed shudder pretty bad and the check engine light illuminated (But went away after i turned the car off and had it parked for awhile) I took the car to auto zone and they said it was a Cylinder No. 1 misfire. The car still drives fine after you get going though.

Now i've had tons of problems with this car including: Transmission replacement, TDC sensor changed and Crank position sensor changed within the last 3 months. I posted about a month or so ago about vanishing coolant. After about a 30 minute drive the reservoir is full to the top and looks like it's bubbling... I've been told by you all it has a blown head gasket (Which I FULLY agree)

I changed the spark plugs today and I was also told by you guys to check the spark plugs for white crap and thats a definite sign of a blown headgasket but I didn't see ANY white stuff. I do not have coolant mixing with oil, I don't have white smoke coming out of my tail pipe, I do not have a white ring around oil cap.. basically no signs of a blown head gasket except vanishing coolant and bubbling coolant in reservoir.

Picture of spark plugs:



After I changed the sparkplugs the car still shook but drove fine after I got going (no check engine light) and it seems to only shudder randomly after starting..(doesnt happen every time)

Could a blown head gasket also cause cylinder misfires?

 
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Another thing is that one of the "coil packs" seemed to have a little more extra rust looking crap on it compared to the others.. Underneath this coil pack was the 2nd spark plug you see in the picture above.

 
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You have coolant leaking into cylinder #1 causing misfire. What happens is coolant flows into the cylinder and doe not allow proper ignition and messes up the fuel/air ratio. Fix your head gasket, you could be doing permanent damage to the engine.

 
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Any recommendation on which head gasket to buy?

 
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Honda OEM

 
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Does that look right and which one? ka or kl?

 
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ka means 49 state emissions, kl is CA state emissions. Only choices I'm given in the online parts stores listed below is ka

and the cheapest places to buy from online I've found is www.hondaautomotiveparts.com ($131, located in RI) and www.hondapartscheap.com ($129 located in so-cal)..

 
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Yay looks like my gearhead Uncle is going to end up tackling it. He says he's seen a lot of hondas come in with blown head gaskets lately ><

Going to give me a decent deal.. $300 for labor + Parts and he has a machine shop he can take it to if the head is warped/cracked.

 
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300 for labor + parts is not bad at all.. Say, where do you live again

 
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Missouri lol...

Uhh another twist.. He told me to get a compression test done and I just did and everything was normal 140psi across all cylinders

 
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O_o

yea.. replace you HG..

 
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So 140psi is not good?

I took it to a quick lube shop that I trust to get the compression test and they told me that it's normal and it's not the headgasket.. They said it's either the radiator or water pump now??????

 
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I made a thread a while back because I had spurious overheating problems. Got a compression test done, and my lowest number was 185.

Another member replied and said that when he blew his HG, his numbers were all about 135-140..
here's his reply

That's what I'm going off of, at least..

 
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Appreciate you getting back to me so fast rice

I was reading through that post and it looks like you fixed your problem with a new radiator cap?

I replaced my radiator cap but it wasnt oem.. it was some cheap one from autozone.. Should I go buy an oem right now? There is a honda stealership like 2 blocks away..

I'm having the same crap it sounds like too.. It drives fine/doesnt overheat on the highway but when I get into town with all the stop signs and stop lights is when it starts heating up..

Also I havent had it misfire since saturday after I put some fuel injector cleaner in...

 
Rep Power: 511

I replaced my rad cap, thermostat, flushed and bled my cooling system.. I haven't had a problem since.. I do wanna get another compression test done because I'm getting random misfire codes, but I haven't felt anything weird

Like in that thread, I had a mugen radiator cap and replaced it with the OEM one, a new thermostat ran me 10 bucks, cooling system flush kit ran me.. 5-10 bucks and coolant's not too expensive either.. It's cheap maintenance and I figured it wouldn't hurt to try before I had my engine ripped apart and me without a car for a week or so..

 
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A blown head gasket can be tricky to diagnose because it can manifest in a variety of different ways. Nonetheless, the gas bubbles in the coolant that overfills the reservoir are pretty sure signs that it's time to pull the head.

 
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So i went to honda and got me an OEM radiator cap(bought a cheapie at autozone last time).. Drove it from work to home today(30 miles) and It didn't overheat and the coolant wasn't at the top of the reservoir.. It got up to the H yesterday when I got into town from work and when I got home I checked and seen coolant to the top of the reservoir. -The weather is just as hot as it was yesterday outside as well

Also.. another thing about the cheap radiator cap from autozone is that I could keep spinning it 'round and 'round and it never seemed to get tight.. The new oem honda cap however spun about once and I couldn't spin it anymore

I'll keep posting until I figure this out

 
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That's a good sign. Rad caps aren't supposed to spin like that lol. When I blew my head gasket I tried changing thermostat/rad cap and bleeding the system and the car was okay for about a week. One day I finally revved it over 5000 and it blew coolant out of the overflow again... so keep an eye on it and maybe go out and rev a little higher than normal, then check the results.

 
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Alright.. After driving it from work to home again today I almost got to my house and started seeing the guage climbing again... I got it home and the temp guage was at a normal level so I revved it to 5 and checked the reservoir and there wasn't any coolant at the top.......

So I drove it around town a little more and it's going back to the H.. I parked it at my house and let it idle, popped the hood and noticed the fans weren't on even though it was on the H!! -They eventually turned on after about 3 minutes and then turned back off even though the temp showed it was still at the H

What now?? lol

 
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bad fan switch perhaps?

 
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First things first. Don't run your car at the H. Not even for troubleshooting because your destroying the internals. It might be a fan switch but I don't understand why they would turn on for a few minutes and then shut off. With the car cold pop the rad cap and check to see if the rad is full to the top with coolant. It does sound fan related. Are you driving the car with the AC on?

 
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There was coolant full up to the top inside the radiator..

Silly question but can a heavily clogged cabin air filter cause overheating? Lol mine was brown and had feathers/leaves and dirt in it.. I can hear my fans now!!!!

 
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highly doubt it..

 
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Naa, even with no heat entering the cabin (let's say you have recirc turned on), the car should still not overheat. Check your fan switch as ^ said.

 
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My uncle that was going to do the head gasket repair took a look at it (He lives 2 hours away thats what took so long) and he checked just about everything, the water pump, catalytic converter, timing built did a leakdown test and a whole bunch of crap on the computer and finally agrees that its the fan.. Haha.. He's replacing the temp sensor and the fan relay..

Oh.. He said the fans were kicking on but they arent staying on as long as they're supposed to be

I'll update if this is the fix

 
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Cool.. He found a crack in the radiator as well ><

 
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I would say this is really starting to **** me off but it already pissed me off when the trans died.

Okay so I got the car back from him today.. Wohoo no more troubles.. I drive it 15 miles and get to stop and go 25mph traffic and the needle goes to the damn H again. WTF

So I call and ask him what to do now after $540 worth of parts and labor was done on it (Radiator, fan sensor, thermostat) and he tells me it probably needs burped with the new radiator. We took the rad cap off while it was hot and a bunch of air + coolant came out.. Put the cap back on and I drove it for about 30 minutes- didnt see it overheat.. Let it sit for 20 minutes and went back out to drive it about 5 miles and when I got where I needed to go it's pegged at the H idling with no fans turning...............

I call him again and he says to stick a paper clip in the fan plug to short it out and keep the fans running all the time so the car can get rid of all the vapor... I do that and now the temp guage is wilder (going up then back down after a little bit etc etc)

I cannot believe this. He said he did a carbon test on it and it checked out so WTF

 
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hmm cooling fan malfunction is rarely the cause for overheating. it hardly ever comes on except very hot days and even then it does not run very long. sometimes a bad fan can cause an overheating problem to get worse tho. now assuming he installed everything properly, it could be a whole lot of air in the system. i struggled for almost a week getting it all out. our radiators have very small passages and get clogged with air more than usual. you need to park on a steep incline or jack up the front of the car. take off the radiator cap, run the engine at high idle (around 3k rpms int), and watch for air coming out the radiator. keep adding coolant if it goes down. turn the heat on full blast and keep doing it til no more air is visible. i had to do this procedure almost 5 times before most of the air came out. small amounts will go away over time. i am a bit curious why they replaced those parts tho, it sounds more like a headgasket issue. clogged radiator is very rare. you can still have the compression numbers come back normal with a small headgasket leak. and you will have misfire from coolant seeping in the cylinder and fouling the plugs. i had the same exact issue. and a new headgasket fixed it. now im wondering, you say in your first post it has to be a headgasket, followed by 10 other members saying the same thing, so why did you not have the headgasket changed, instead of a bunch of other unrelated parts that cannot possibly cause the problem youre describing? a cracked radiator needs to be fixed, okay, but that still doesnt relate to the overheating.

 
Rep Power: 313

It took me 45 minutes to bleed the air out of the system for me. A good little trick to know, after you bleed the air, leave the rad cap off overnight and when you come back in the morning the rest of the air will have come out by itself naturally. But only do this after the line has been thoroughly bled to begin with.