pmjr0987

i think my head gasket is leaking, looking to replace

i got the milkyish oil, one spark plug looks shity and ill post a pic soon.

looking for a cheap quality head gasket set that has the essentials and nothing else.car has 211k miles now and i dont plan on putting more than 10k miles on the car before selling (1 year from now) so i want to fix it but not over board so when i sell it im not selling junk like someone sold me

$65 free shipping for a head gasket set, what do you guys think

http://www.ebay.com/itm/01-05-Honda-...ht_2622wt_1080

EDIT/UPDATE 3/10/12 3pm

Oils is not milky. what i did was when i checked it it was about a half quart low so i added a half quart of dexIII transmission fluid to the motor to help clean it out. ran it for about 50-60 miles then drained and put in 3 quarts of cheap oil with a bottle of marvel mystery oil. im going to leave this in until i figure out whats wrong and fix it and then i have a 5+ quart bottle of penzoil synthetic and a k&n filter that will go in.

Although the oil was black it was not milky at all. Compression test showed 112-135 psi across all cyl but this was done with throttle closed. i will recheck with throttle open but i read it doesn't make much difference anyway.

One good friend told me to do a pressure test on the radiator. he said get the tester pump it up to the psi recommended and then walk away for an hour. if the pressure goes down at all its got a small head gasket leak is this true, is this the way to check?

lazlong

You're kinda contradicting yourself by saying you don't want to sell junk but, want to buy the cheapest aftermarket part you can find for a critical part. Not to say that kit is junk but, OEM is usually the way to go with critical parts.

All that being said it'll probably be fine for how long you want to keep it.

OEM kit is number 1: http://www.hondaautomotiveparts.com/...ry5=GASKET+KIT

pmjr0987

thanks im leaning toward the felpro for $109 shipped i always liked the brand. honda is $145 shipped thats an option as well

From what im reading online the $65 set is good for a stock motor even slightly built as long as its the MLS steel version which is what this one is. this car will never see any mods and with 211k on it i think any headgasket set i go with will last as long as the motor. and when it comes time to replace the motor, i see them going for a few hundred $$

Anyone else have any actual experience with the mizumo MLS steel head gaskets? ill be ordering this weekend. im going to do a compression and die test first just to make sure it is actually leaking 100%

BlueEM2

iTrader: (1)

Hmm.. 211k miles? go OEM regardless.

04 Honda Civic

iTrader: (2)

lazlong is pretty much on point.

pmjr0987

no go on felpro?

what is the kit #2 in the illustration?

So here is an update with some pictures. just a week ago i did not know anything about hondas. zero ive been purley jeep strait 6's. mustang 5.0's and GM 3800's basically my whole life. this is fun and new for a change lol

anyway, here is a picture, this is from the cyl left center. this is what originally made me think head gasket



so i changed plugs and after about 100 miles i took them out today and this is what they look like



here is a picture with my compresson numbers. I forgot to hold the throttle wide open so i think that has something to do with the low numbers, but regardless they are weak.



the dark spark plug is the one that is in the hole the bad plug came out of in the first pic

does this still sound like head gasket? could it be valves? there is alot of ticking going on much more than my sisters honda civic but hers has 40k miles on it

02civicsi02

The compression test is pretty low but not bad for a 200k mileage motor. The numbers should be at least I think 15 psi from each other. So the one on the left is alittle far off from the others. There are tons of things that you can tell in a compression test, it can tell if the head gasket is leaking, if your rings are bad, or something with the valves. Now mainly its usually the head gasket but can be burnt valves or piston rings have worn the cylinders or burnt rings.

Now that plug looks awful from the amount of miles it has on it. That cylinder is running rich as hell which is the cause of wrong fuel air mixture.

Now you said you have milky oil so is it overheating. To me it seems like a headgasket but it can use a slight rebuild.

04 Honda Civic

iTrader: (2)

I am going to say its definately a bad headgasket. But maybe another underlying problem.
I assume it overheats? Possibly loosing heat intermittantly or all together?

Manual says they should be 135 psi minimum. However that is with a test done at WOT.

You sure your compression tester is accurate? I would redo the test at WOT and see what happens.

Does the car have power?

pmjr0987

hey guys ill clarify a few things i must have forgot to post i was in a rush

as far as driving and comparing to my sisters 03 civic ex auto w/30k miles
-starts instantly and idles dead smooth
-does not smoke oil from what i can see in my rear view mirror even WOT red line shifts
-i dont smell anything emulating from the tail pipe that indicates blown head gasket, but the gasket could be seeping and not fully blown yet idk
-does not over heat, needle never goes even to the half way mark, goes right under that and stays there
-heat works fantastic
-after draining the oil, it looks black not milky the car must have sat before i got it
-car doesn't seem to have a vtec surge of power, there is almost no difference in power from 3k- basically red line. car is completely stock except i took the resonator off the stock intake so i could at least hear something when i stepped on the gas, dont know if vtec on this car is as big of a deal as other hondas but it doesn't seem to do anything on this one. i also noticed very slight power differences sometimes it feels a tad faster than other times
-after really examining the coolant i think there is some shiny metallic looking stuff in there although very faint, i think someone somewhere back in the past put that bars head gasket treatment crap into the car

i have a persistent CEL P1457 (evap) dont think its related i read its a valve by the gas tank so im not worried about it at the moment, it stays off for a few days then trips i reset and pops back up in a few days



the new plugs in the picture were in there for a day and that one has some serious soot on it. how hard is it to swap injectors? i might do this and see if the soot switches with injector swap. i will also recheck compression with WOT and hot motor

pmjr0987

any tips would be appreciated guys. ill try some other forums too i guess.

I re checked compression again. i have about 200 miles on the oil, and about 250 on the plugs. I also dropped a whole 25 gallon concentrated bottle of injector cleaner in about 10 gallons of gas and am running it through.

the dark sooted plug pictured above is now a light brown and they all look very similar

oil is still not milky at all, both on the stick and on the cap

I redid the compression test with WOT with new oil and got 130-140 psi in all cyl. is this still low? it is alot better than my first time doing it seeing 112 lol

i read 135 is recommended for d17 and then i hear 135 is service limit low.which one is it? either way ill be throwing in a can of restore as it does actually help piston rings

im guessing my headgasket is not bad after all

02civicsi02

We have done told you what we think and its probably a head gasket. 135 is the service limit so it needs to be changed period, when you change the head gasket get the head and block decked. Another thing with that 200k motor I would replace the valve seals. Also probably the piston rings, nothing can be put in the motor that can help piston rings. 200k is a lot of miles and the piston rings have been worn and so has the cylinder as well. The piston ring gap could be at the service limit. The piston to wall clearance is probably not to well of either. It be best to check them things while having the motor mostly apart.

pmjr0987

you guys were not giving me answers correctly though because my first few post said things that are actually not true, particularly the 112 psi compression that is not true (leaky gauge and test not done wot) and the milky oil that was just because the car was sitting. oil is not actually milky

Why is this still a head gasket? low compression? its border line service limit 135 is basically what it is. what psi does a healthy d17 run? cant seem to find that info anywhere... also i noticed the psi went to 150 across the board when i put some oil in then checked compression. My sister had an old Chrysler with low compression and engine restore actually made a huge difference in the compression and power in that slant 6.

If the motor was shot like u are saying wouldn't it have more symptoms then just below average compression? even 7k rpm shifts result in no smoke or anything out the tail pipe and oil level is not moving. no coolant smell etc. ill be checking oil level though as the miles roll on.

i do notice my valvetrain is noisy, could a valve adjustment help ?

pmjr0987

got a pressure tester on it for about 4 hours now and the radiator pressure has not dropped at all. could this still be a head gasket?

pmjr0987

*tap* *tap*


Is this thing on?

pjb3

I doubt it is the head gasket. Head gaskets can fail in different ways such as allowing coolant in the oil which gives oil the milky appearance but it seems that Civics almost always fail by allowing combustion gas into the coolant. As the gas displaces the coolant the coolant is forced into the overflow bottle until it is full and overflows. The air in the cooling system usually causes the heater to fail to produce heat. Since you have no coolant in the oil and your not losing heat or overflowing coolant I would be surprised if the head gasket is leaking.

As far as pressure testing the radiator, I'm not sure that would tell you anything about the head gasket. A radiator test is going to be around 16 psi while compression pressure would be in the hundreds of psi so a leak could easily occur at compression pressure but not at the testing pressure. Another thing is that your test is going to be on a cool engine which is different from operating temperature.

Looking at your compression reading they don't seem bad for an older engine. The numbers are within 10% which most people consider good. Absolute compression numbers can change based on a number of factors, some as simple as how long you crank the engine. The readings with oil are higher but that is almost always the case since it will cause the rings to seal better. Compression testing wet or with oil is usually done when you have one cylinder with lower readings and the oil will tell you if it is the piston rings or valves. You could try a dry and wet compression test on your sisters Civic and see how it compares to yours.

At this time your only problem seems to be one plug possibly fouling but it seems to run fine. I would let it go and take a look at the plugs at the next oil change and see if the fouling is still there.

Also, adding ATF to the oil for cleaning is an old trick but not a good idea. ATF is close to 10 weight oil but does not have any detergent. It was thought to be a good cleaner since transmissions stay much cleaner than engines but without combustion there is no comparison. The bottom line is ATF is an oil with none of the additive an engine needs. It won't hurt an engine for a couple of hundred miles but it will not do much good. As far as Engine Restore, I have never tried it but would be surprised if it made a difference. Most additives, especially for oil, do very little. The two exceptions seem to be AutoRx and Lube Control. AutoRx claims it may increase power by loosening sticking rings. I have used AutoRx and it did clean the engine but I noticed no difference in how it ran. Since the engines had not been neglected I'm not sure there was anything for it to 'fix'.

pmjr0987

thank you for your time responding. I did the atf in the oil because i had a half quart left of some dexIII and i heard through uncles and the internet that it could help. Also the reason why i brought up restore (chrome looking tin can) is that my father used it in a 1983 labaron that had almost no compression and it made the car run like new after about 500 miles. it has some properties in it that actually melt into the cyl walls to fill scratches etc, my reasoning for wanting to use restore is because of what i saw it did in my sisters old car

I only ran that for a day and then i drained the oil and poured half a quart of new oil through till it was draining cleaner. I proceeded to do the other 2.5 quarts in it with 1 pint of marvel mystery oil. its about half way up the add/full marks and has not changed over the last 500 miles i have driven since the oil change. next week ill change the oil again and this time do a filter and maybe restore but im holding off on doing that oil change until i figure out if im going to go through with the headgasket or not

That one plug has now mysteriously changed color again.

that dark plug is the top plug in this picture, i took this today. as you can see its not dark anymore and it looks like its getting covered in a cream colored hard layer especially when you compare it to the plug underneath it that has the same few hundred miles on it

pjb3

I have done the ATF along with other engine oil cleaning and oil flush products so I understand what you are trying. I hate to admit that I have used Gunk engine oil flush which is basically xylene or kerosene and I would never use anything like it again.

If the engine has minor dirt then I think your approach of frequent oil changes is the best way. The problem is if you are going to clean an engine you want to do it slowly so that the contaminates get carried to the oil filter and trapped. If try to clean sludge too quickly you run the risk of large amounts plugging the oil suction sreen or other oil passages.

04 Honda Civic

iTrader: (2)

I am going to say that its not the headgasket then. Based upon what you said the motor seems to be worn.

Your saying powerband is the same from 3k- basically red line, is a good indication of worn rings.

I would really like to know why your oil is milky white though. If your not overheating and your heat works fine chances are its not the headgasket.

pmjr0987

I did mention in my first post that the oil was milky looking on the stick. I did just wash the engine bay and after thinking about it perhaps some dripped down the tube. after that day and everyday after there is no milkshake anywhere. when i drained that oil out it was black but no milkshake at all just oil.

I went ahead and did a valve adjustment yesterday and besides being way to much slack especially in the exhaust side, everything looked great including cam, rollers, timing belt and oil. very surprised actually lol.

One thing i did was check the torque on the head bolts, stock is 51 lbs i went ahead and set my wrench 5 lbs higher (56) and from center out ran along the bolts and two bolts got about an 1/8 turn out of them before reaching the pressure. those were the bolts around the cyl 3 that has the plug problems. idk if that did anything, but the valve adjustment made my car super quiet which is fantastic

im glad i did all this testing, i would have been wasting my time and money doing a full headgasket/rebuild on this motor. Im just going to change the oil again, change the trans oil and i think it will be fine going on my 1500 mile trip in two weeks... fingers crossed i can deal with worn rings the motor doesnt smoke it just doesnt make much power, im still getting about 9-9.5 0-60 times which i think is only a few tenths off what it did new

04 Honda Civic

iTrader: (2)

Ah, so perhaps you got a bit of water inside the dipstick tube when washing it?

You can not check torque like that, I doubt you did any good, and hopefully nothing bad.

Yea, I was 100% sure it was the headgasket but the more you report back the more it seems to not be a hg.


How is the oil consumption? Do you consume alot of oil?

pmjr0987

it does seem to be using oil ive only put about 1000 miles on the car so far and added almost a quart

what would be a better way to check the torque?

pjb3

Less than one quart every 1000 miles isn't horrible. Since your plugs weren't fouled the most common ways to lose oil would be worn valve guide seals or a leak. Worn valve seals usually show up as white smoke when you let off the throttle. The high manifold vacuum when you take your foot off the gas pulls oil past the seals. More likely you have a slow leak.

There is no better way to check the torque.

pmjr0987

The car made it to Virginia from NY yesterday. So far about 450 miles and it used over a quart of oil. The car is not liking the 4000 rpm 80 MPH highway runs I guess. I'm thinking valve seals are the culprit. Ha sent overheated or even budged temp wise from two hours of stopped traffic from a bad accident to over an hour of 4000+ rpm highway cruising. Guess that answers my head gasket question lol.

Any additives I can add to help with oil consumption on this trip? Going to south Carolina with the car tomorrow then back to NY next Sunday I have about 1200 more miles to go in the next week

pjb3

I am not a fan of oil additives but I think there are a few that are worthwhile. As far as an additive that will control oil consumption, I would think it would depend on how the oil is being consumed. If there is an oil leak or the valve stem seals are bad I don't think anything will help. If the piston oil control rings are gummed up or sticking Auto-Rx or Lube Control may help.

In the past I had a Jeep that used oil and when I switched from a 30 to 40 weight it used much less. You don't say what weight oil you are using but if it is 20 weight I would try a 30.

mastiffdude

I Just went through an exhaustive search for why my coolant was overflowing through the reservoir.4 mechanics told me it was probably the head gasket.I did have the car overheat when the coolant got low.
However there was no milk in the oil and the coolant was clean.Well after long thought i went ahead and pulled the head. The head was warped around #3&4 cyl.Had the head reconditioned put it on and car ran well for a week,then it started sluggishness and low power and missing.im pissed by this time.So today i went and pulled the egr off the motor and cleaned it with carb cleaner,and ran some pipe cleaners trying to clear the passages to the head.(when i had the head off i cleaned the intake passages)Guess what ?the car runs fine now.Well see any how i want to stress to check and clean or replace that EGR valve.its 2 12 MM nuts and it comes off.thre a little offset so use a wobbler extension or even a closed head wrench.I WANT TO THANK EVERYONE ON HERE,without the knowledge i gained on here i wouldnt have been able to make right decisions about the car.