Rep Power: 186

ezone, if you don't mind me asking, what is the average cost at your dealership for a HG job(parts and labor)?

 
Rep Power: 518

Dude, I have no idea.
Honestly.
I refuse to estimate anything more than a parts list and labor time. Someone else does the adding and tells the customer. 600-1000 McDoubles? I really don't know.

If I had to tell people the prices on the work I do, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

When I started in the biz, labor was under 30/hr at a dealership. It's astronomical now. And higher yet in a big city.



All that money I generate for THE MAN, and yet I think I'm doing good if I can afford bologna with 2 names.

 
Rep Power: 186

I plan on pulling the water pump to let the block drain before I pull the head. My question is what is the best method for getting the oil out of the water jacket? I was thinking using a funnel and dumping water down various areas of the water jacket and let it run out the water pumping opening.

Any recommendations would be appreciated.

 
Rep Power: 518

Yeah, something like this.
I like to use brake parts cleaner to clean up oil residue, but you can't just wipe it up from the bottom of a water jacket. (Brake clean and rinse with washer solvent, not kidding... LOL.)
But yes, flushing it out to the side is what I would do.
Maybe some DAWN?
See how much oil gets in there first. Then deal with it.
Try to avoid dumping anything down the oil return holes and into the crankcase though.

HTH

 
Rep Power: 186

Awesome man! Thanks again for all your help. I'll be tackling it tomorrow. I'll get back to you with updates, not that you really care since you've done hundreds of these and this is my first one.

 
Rep Power: 186

Update:

Good news: Intake is pushed back and away. Exhaust is off. Timing belts off. Valve cover and head(of course) still on.

Bad news: HG and intake manifold gasket don't come in until Wednesday afternoon.

I don't want to take the head off until all parts are here since I'm doing this in a parking stall and have no where to put it. My apartment doesn't have a garage space.

Question: Is the oil pressure sensor plug suppose to just pull off on this model(2002 ex)?

I ask this because I pulled on it and it didn't budge. And yes, I was using my man hands when I pulled on it. I didn't want to go nuts on it for fear of breaking it. It feels like there is a small metal rod underneath the rubber protecting the wires on the plug side that would be the place to pull, which is where I was pulling from. I didn't manage to get it off so I had to work around it to get that bottom middle nut off of the intake, but re-installation would be nice with out that oil pressure sensor plug in the way.

Any info on it would be helpful.

 
Rep Power: 518

Which one? The one above the oil filter?

WHY? I don't recall it being in the way of anything. I get that bottom nut from above.

It probably has a bullet connector, they can be one tough SOB to get apart. I sometimes use loooooooong needlenose pliers and pry them off. A little twisting can help while prying too.

 
Rep Power: 186

Ok good to know it's an SOB to get off.

I was going to disconnect to get to that lower middle bolt, which looked hard to get to from the top. I ended up just taking off both intake brackets and got a box end up there and was able to loosen. I could barely squeeze my hand up in there to spin it off, but at least that tells me I should be able to spin it back on.

 
Rep Power: 186

Also step 15 of the Honda service manual head removal tells you to disconnect it and the VTEC oil sensor. It made sense to me if you wanted to get at the intake bolt from the bottom as the connector is directly below that bolt.

 
Rep Power: 518

Oh, THAT.

I don't normally read that until I really can't figure out how something was supposed to come apart. Usually long after I should have looked it up. LOL

 
Rep Power: 186

Yeah, us armchair mechanics don't have your expertise, so I always follow the procedure and learn what I can and cannot skip as I go. I like to call it my super power....common sense.

For example, learning I can just push the intake back out of the way rather than disconnect all the those connectors and remove it completely. I know now and will never forget.

 
Rep Power: 518

What do you do when the job stops going "according to the book"? LOL

We got tons of rust here, the books don't take that into account at all!
They must never rust in sunny southern California.

Seems like I've already forgotten more than most will ever know. AND I have the memory of a goldfish.

My ex used to wonder how on Earth I could take a car apart, leave it for a month, put it back together with not only no extra bolts left over, but have every bolt back in the holes they came out of.......when I can't ever remember to take the garbage out on trash day when I leave in the morning.

 
Rep Power: 186

Believe it or not, we have similar jobs or at least we have to think similarly.

I'm kind of like EMS for fast attack submarines periscope, photonics and radar system depending on what class of submarine we're talking about. I go down and they tell me this doesn't work. I ask many questions(like pulling teeth) to find out when it happened, how long has it been like this blah blah blah. I myself always want to know the root cause of the problem to begin with (wear and tear) operator error(big problem these days). I have this job because of training the Navy gave me 18+ plus years ago and I have kept up with ever evolving technology for submarines. The job is pure troubleshooting and making recommendations for repairs. I almost never use the tech manual because 99% of the problems are never covered in it. I'm a "paper troubleshooter" meaning lots of electronics scats.

My point is I almost never get the straight truth or I'm flat out lied too. That's why I think our jobs are similar, just different fields.

 
Rep Power: 518

I think I just walked a mile in your shoes.
Or vise-versa.

 
Rep Power: 186

I think you said something about surveying this problem. I went ahead and added my symptoms to the "Over heating common causes" thread at the top of the 7th gen mechanical problem thread page.

 
Rep Power: 366

Matt_75, by any chance are you related to an individual who have an mazda miata and uses *GTXHawaii* as username in another forum? .... (I have 2 miatas, so i frequent miata forums too, and you sound quite like him... and he's in hawaii, too...)
not completely sure of the causes of your issues, but surely you got a rep for the contributions to the investigations of overheating in said thread
if i can be of any help that ezone cannot provide (yeah, right!...) i will try to do my best
regards
sdaidoji

the way he writes is quite different from you, so don't think you are him, thou... Ah, yes, his name was Bill Taylor

 
Rep Power: 186

Negative ghost rider, no relation.


I never in a million years would think I could be him. But why would I want to be him when I can be me?

 
Rep Power: 186

BTW, thanks for the rep. Definitely wasn't expecting that.

 
Rep Power: 186

I honestly think I've had the HG issue for a while now. I was loosing a subtle amount of coolant every few months, but chalked it up to evaporation since this isn't a truly closed system. It just bore it's ugly head with the tell tail reserve tank overflow, no overheating issues this past weekend.

 
Rep Power: 186

BTW, is there suppose to be oil and soot on the intake area when you remove it?

 
Rep Power: 366

oh, yeah, i found on mine too, not sure where it came from.
i thought you might know gtx since he's aeronautic engineer and kinda have similar approach, that was it :P

 
Rep Power: 186

Winner winner chicken dinner! I'm thinking #3 looks a little wet/discolored.

This is straight off the block. Almost no paint stuck on the block or head when I took the HG off.





Head side of HG


Block side of HG

 
Rep Power: 518

Yes.

Don't lose those 2 dowel tubes! Make sure you KNOW which holes they go in.

 
Rep Power: 186

I didn't loose the dowel tubes and I put them in there proper spots. I put the head and old HG back on the block because I don't have the new gaskets yet. I just wanted to take pictures and look at it to verify indeed it was the problem and as you can see it was.

 
Rep Power: 186

ezone,

When you've seen overheated heads/blocks, does a lot of the gasket actually stick to the block/head or just some paint?

 
Rep Power: 518

You have a MLS (multi-layer steel) head gasket in that engine. The only thing that can possibly stick is the black paint.

 
Rep Power: 518

Engines that use a composite gasket: That damn thing sticks everywhere no matter what happened.... unless it hasn't been started yet.

 
Rep Power: 186

Awesome! Thanks for the info.

I knew I had an MLS, but because of my lack of experience, didn't know if it melted to either service in extreme heat. Sounds like the MLS is much better than a composite gasket no matter how you look at it or are there advantages and disadvantages?

 
Rep Power: 518

Ummm...The aluminum would melt long before steel.

However....maybe under certain conditions, flame could burn through the steel gasket, but I'd also expect it to burn the aluminum too. I haven't seen any do this though.




I prefer MLS and I understand many of its advantages over composite, but I'm not the engineer that decides how to build the dang things. I think Honda has them in everything now.....Other manufacturers were using them many years before Honda did.

I think this engine could be a bit more robust if the engineers had spec'd TTY head bolts in it along with the MLS head gasket..

 
Rep Power: 186

Ummmm...yeah, that was a stupid comment. It should have registered before I typed it but....it didn't. I promise I'm not that stupid, I just have problems typing before I think.