CMDR Karos

I just did a cold compression test on my 99 civic with D16Y8 motor.

4 3 2 1
180 170 165 180

I think I might have a headgasket leak but I changed my headgasket about 4 months ago with a felpro triple layer head gasket. I did not get the head resurfaced because the head gasket never blew, just the coolant kept disappearing every week. Are these numbers common for an engine with 220,000 miles on it.

Colin42

Those look fine in my opinion,, see any coolant residue any where?
The rads tend to leak where the plastic and the aluminum meet

ezone

What prompted you to do a compression check?
Got misfire codes or something?


Adjust valves yet?

CMDR Karos

My friend who I bought the car from said he did a valve job on it because he owns 3 hondas and learned how to do it himself and did it on all his cars for practice. The car is having a problem starting. Once it starts it runs fine and starts back up just fine the next time. So i was assuming that when it sits the cylinder was filling up with water and making it hard to start. But I just did a coolant flush on the car because I had some cooling system cleaner that I left in the motor for months and wanted to flush it out because I thought that might be the reason I kept getting a lot of foam. And it didn't start having the starting issue until after I did the coolant flush so I thought maybe sticking the garden hose in the block(when it was cold) to reverse flush it might of made the head gasket leak worse. I also believe that my radiator cap had been leaking because when I was first warming the car up I could squeeze a coolant line and coolant would come out of the overfill tank. I had an aftermarket radiator cap that had a temp gauge on it that I bought from ebay. So I put the stock cap back on and the system gets pressure. I drove it for an hour tonight and the car didn't over heat. Ill wait till morning to open the radiator cap to see if I lost any coolant. I already bought everything to do the head gasket but I really want to find out if I REALLY need it or not sense I already did it a few months ago. About a month ago I did get a hole in my radiator when I was driving on the highway and had the car towed home and I threw in a new stock radiator.

I have a bluetooth OBDII scanner that's always plugged into the car and I get no codes or misfires. Every now and then I get a "voltage high sensor 1 bank 2" or "voltage high air temp sensor" but I've changed my O2 sensor and temp sensor sense but only the O2 code has popped up from time to time.

CMDR Karos

Just did a coolant leak test at 20psi and after 10 minutes it didn't go down.

ezone

How so? Be specific.

CMDR Karos

It doesnt start strong. Just sort of starts and chugs at a really low rpm and sometimes I have to step on the pedal for anything to happen.

mac25

Good news is that it will correct itself.

If you don't do a valve job perfectly they can sit close but not perfect.

But with time they will grind down true, and carbon build up will fill them smooth.

CMDR Karos

When running the engine foam builds up. I don't know if its from the cleaner that was in there or a leaking headgasket.


No bubbles when I fill the cylinder up with air. The cylinder in the picture that has the air line in it was the one that had the lowest compression at only 160 while the others were at 180.


I used a coolant leak tester and pumped it up to 20 PSI and it held for 10 minutes.

ezone

So check the things that control idle speed cold.
Got any fault codes?
IAC stuck or bad?


As far as the compression numbers.......check and adjust valve clearances, then see if that helps the compression numbers any. Also try a wet test
If you really want to know more, a cylinder leakage check or leakdown check might help you find out where any loss is leaking

I'd be concerned about anyone who just yanks all their cars apart just because they think they learned how to do a valve job.....I'm scared of what they learned incorrectly, and how long their work may last before becoming another problem.