Rep Power: 0

2004 Civic LX

Symptoms:

Smell coolant when I turn off car, no visible leakage

After a week, I seem to have lost enough coolant to fill back up about half a gallon or a little more.

When it starts overheating, I lose all heat from vents (I put on max heat A/C OFF)

Take off radiator cap, bubbles at top until thermostat opens then I can fill up that missing half gallon.

Thermostat is replaced.

After I refill with half a gallon, works for another week before it starts overheating due to suspected coolant loss (no visible leakage and I have LOOKED EVERYWHERE)

SO:

1) What's wrong? haha
2) Could it be water pump? Seems to me I'm not getting enough into block (as per there not being enough hitting back of thermostat to open it up very quickly) Also loss of heat would suggest this.
3) Leaking into combustion chamber? How would I check for this?

Any ideas?

 
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head gasket

 
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^^^^ Yep.

You can get a compression test run on your car for either free or very cheap and that will tell you for sure, but from all the symptoms you describe, you've got a leaky HG.

Watch your exhaust. You'll either have more condensation dripping from the tail pipe, whiter colored exhaust, or both.

 
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compression test may or may not show depending on how bad the leak is

you may want to do a leakdown as well

 
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What kind of place is the best to take it to to get a compression test done? Also, is there a test to see if combustion gasses are present in the coolant?

 
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Other way around. You want to see if coolant is in the exhaust. HG replacement isn't that difficult if you have a set of metric sockets and a torque wrench.