cyc

2005 Civic Hybrid suddenly started overheating during a long drive on a hot day. There was a clinging noise in the engine when accelerating, like something was spinning but an edge kept hitting something. Coasted to the exit, stopped at a light, then wouldn't start, so I had to get it towed to a parking spot. I waited a few hours and suddenly it was working fine again (yeah, I know, but I was 500 miles from home and didn't want to have to get a flight home - which I ended up having to do), but after 15 minutes it began to overheat again so I pulled over immediately. I filled it with coolant, but it doesn't seem to change anything. A mechanic that took a look at it for a minute said it was a blown headgasket, but I wanted to ask here to double check, as he wasn't very thorough. (He didn't really even look, just tried to start it after pouring coolant in and said it was a blown headgasket.) It seems to drive 100% fine for like 10-20 minutes if you wait a few hours between attempts, but then it will overheat.

The car is pretty beatup and has 260,000 miles now. It's not really worth it to fix it if it is in fact as headgasket and it's going to cost four-figures to fix.

So,

1. Is this a blown headgasket?

2. Are there any repair options in the 3-figure range? I'm not an experienced mechanic and don't have the time to work on the car 350 miles from home, so doing anything extensive myself is not an option.

3. If I get rid of this, any recommendations on where I can get the most value? I have it listed on Craigslist already, but not many biters and I live 350 miles away and it's parked on the street, so I have to keep going there and moving it or else I'll end up with a bunch of tickets and/or get towed if I keep waiting. It's in Los Angeles. If anyone here has any interest, I'd be happy to sell it for any price that's not a complete ripoff.

honda200192

So there's a few different ways to tell if you have a blown head gasket. 1. if there's coolant in your oil or oil in your coolant 2. do a compression test 3. overheating like you're experiencing. 260,000 miles is a lot of miles so I guess it depends on how well you maintained the engine and cooling system but for some cars the head gaskets a matter of when is it going to blow. Some cars go 3-4 hundred thousand miles with the original head gasket and then some go 120,000 miles before the head gasket blows. The only way to really know if your head gasket is blown is get a second opinion. Now I'm not calling the mechanic who looked at your car a liar . But if you get a second opinion from another mechanic and he says the same thing then your head gasket is probably blown. It's just there are so many fraudulent mechanics out there so you need to be careful. And in my opinion I would say no its not worth fixing just because of the amount of miles you have on the car. And the head gaskets a pretty big job you have to take apart most of the engine to get to it which means you might as well rebuild the engine if you're going to go through that much work to replace a gasket. As for the value of your car I couldn't tell you but you can go on to nada or Kelley Blue Book and get A value estiment. With the head gasket being blown IF that's the problem then it's not going to be worth a whole lot and with that many miles. Because you're right it's going to cost easy over $1000 to replace it by a mechanic and with that many miles there's going to be other things that need to be replaced. So just keep all of that in mind. I would just sell it for however much you can get out of it based on a good valued review from nada or Kelley Blue Book and then go buy yourself a new car. Hope all of that helped and I'm sorry if i went overboard on my reply

honda200192

One thing I forgot to add is if you see white smoke coming from your tailpipe that's a very good indicator your head gasket is blown. And being how it's summertime you wont get it confused with a cold engine starting on a cold morning.

ezone

The engine in the hybrid wasn't known for blowing its head gasket, but any overheat event can cause it to happen. It SOUNDS like it's blown now.

You ran it overheated until it quit on its own, that's very bad. That's an extreme overheat IMO.
I'd expect the cylinder head is now warped at the very least.

Piston rings could be compromised from the overheat too.



It might be best to just replace the engine with a good used unit.