ezone

Ouch. Smokes after high vacuum, oil getting sucked in along the intake stems

I just know the Honda parts catalog shows 2 different part numbers.
Manual says intake stem seal has a white spring, exhaust stem seal has a black spring.
Also....if one shoves the seals down too far they can be damaged or spread out so the seal doesn't do its job.

Did you get factory parts or aftermarket?

drhawkinz

Messed around with the car a little bit Friday and today. The machine shop sold me an Ajusa CRP gasket kit. I drained the oil today and put in some fresh oil to get all the assembly lube out of the system. Plugs look oily but they aren't wet and gummy but I'm sure 10 miles isn't enough time to get a good read on them. If I shine a light down into the cylinder it looks wet, everything has a little shimmer on it.



I drove the car up on ramps and burped the coolant, let it run for about 10 minutes with the cap off, a few fairly big bubbles came out eventually. The idle issue was gone (although after driving it's still there a little bit). The car didn't smoke any until I put the cap on the radiator, then it started smoking from the tailpipe.

I drove the car a bit and it drives fine other than the smoke. When I drove about 3 miles to the gas station and as I pulled up to a parking spot it was idling up and down and then settled down. I'm pretty sure it's burning coolant and not oil since it wasn't smoking with the radiator cap off. I guess I have to take the head back off and take a look at it. The CEL did pop on by the time I got back to the house with a P401 and P420 code. I know the P420 is to replace the cat. From what I quickly searched it looks like the P401 is the EGR issue which could be cause by a clogged cat so maybe the 2 are related.

ezone

If it's just soot you see....reading plugs just tells how the engine was running when it was last shut off. I assume you started it up cold and drove up on the ramps, maybe a minute total run time on a cold rich running engine?

Yea but if it was antifreeze the cloud would smell sickeningly sweet like burning antifreeze. Installing the cap just before noticing smoke may just be coincidence.

You had it up on ramps idling the entire time before you put the rad cap on. Extended idle period can make it collect oil and the huge puff comes after there's enough, or following the first blip of the throttle. (leaving the food window after sitting in a drive-thru line is a time many people notice oil smoke from valve stem seals)

Leave rad cap off, let it idle same amount of time, then hit the gas a few times I bet it will still smoke exactly the same.
No, it can't.
Wonder what CRP stands for LOL
P0401. It's real likely the kit came with the wrong intake gasket, or if it came with two the wrong one was chosen.

drhawkinz

Yeah, I had drove it around town a day or two before but then cranked it up to get it on the ramps.

Yeah I don't really know what the smell is suppose to be like, it doesn't quite smell like burning oil though. I guess I could throw some on the exhaust manifold and see what it smells like as it burns off.


Yeah I had it idle for about 10 minutes to get the bubbles out. Then put the cap on and let it sit a little longer to make sure the fans come on. Then noticed that it was smoking. In the video I had just come back from the store and called my gf out for a second opinion on the color. Then she took the video. So all that smoke was from idle for about 30 seconds. I had hit the gas to get some smoke out to see the color and then we took the video a few seconds later.

yeah that would be a good test.

oh yeah, i was thinking it was the EGR itself but i forgot it flows through that plate between the air intake manifold and the head.

drhawkinz

Finally got the car back together and running. I took the head off to redo the headgasket work and fixed the burning coolant issue but this lead me to learn that I was still burning oil. After doing some google searches I found that I should of cut the oil expander ring. I had trimmed it down because it seemed too big but I learned that it's suppose to just compress down like the piston rings.

Here's the amount I had trimmed off:


You can see the difference it makes once the oil control rings are in place, this is before I put the new expander ring in:


With proper expander ring:


After I had put everything together and cranked it back up there was a little smoke and when I backed out of the drive way a little cloud of smoke floated. I thought SOB this turd is still burning oil but it was fine after that so must of just been burning off oil from reassembling everything.


I also checked the EGR passages to make sure everything was clear. I was still getting the P401 CEL. I was searching around and mostly found info on how to clean the EGR but then I found a video about the intake gasket. I order a new gasket that had extra holes which seems to be the proper one. You can see the EGR holes in red compared to the original gasket. Do the LX/DX models not have an EGR system?




The car seems to be running pretty good now! I have a little coolant leak that I hopefully fixed today but we'll see. Thanks for all the help along the way!

ezone

Just when I think I've heard it all......

drhawkinz

it's extra experience points ... gotta look at the bright side. haha