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Here is a little back story on the car. 91 Civic LX. I got the car about 12 years ago from a friend. The head gasket blew on him. He paid a shop to fix it. But when they fixed it they never machined the head so it blew within 500 miles again. He took it back and they gave him the finger. He did not want to fight them nor did he want to dump more money in it so he gave it to me. Car had 107K on it at the time and everything worked right down to the R12 AC. I took it apart and had the head machined etc. I drove it for about 2 years and put ~15K more on it with no problems. My daughter needed a car so I gave it to her. For years it was only used on the weekends as she used public transportation when she was working. Now she is married with kids and is a stay at home mom. Her husband started using it to commute to and from work. Car has 133K on it car. The car was stolen from their complex about 2 months ago. It was gone for about a week before it was recovered. No physical damage was done. My son-in -law started driving it again and after a couple tanks of gas after getting it back it started running bad and smoking/overheating. I diagnosed the head gasket again. #2 was pressurizing the radiator. Car has I pulled it apart, had the head machined again and put it back together. Before I pulled it apart, I did a compression test and all the cylinders were between 170-180PSI. I got it all back together. Drove it around all last weekend to do short errands. Car runs nice and smooth so I decided to drive it to work on Monday. My commute is ~26 miles each way with 70% of it being freeway. About 15 miles in on monday the oil light started flickering so I pulled over. Checked it and everything looked ok. Got back on the road and another 3-4 miles it started again so I pulled over. Let it sit for 3-4 minutes and then It was ok till I got to work. I ordered a new oil pressure switch and went and picked it up at my lunch break. Was maybe 3-4 miles there and back. No oil light flicker. I did not have the tools to change the switch at work so I drove the car home. Again about 15-6 miles in the oil light started to come on. I had to stop another 3 times before I got the car home. I changed the pressure switch and went for a drive and about 12 miles in on a country road the oil light started flickering again. I limped the car home by stopping every 3-4 miles.

I am a decent hobby mechanic but I am not a Honda guy so I do not know a lot about these engines. With that being said, when I did the head gasket the first time (12 years ago), I did not mess with that oil restrictor thing that is in the block. I just replaced the head gasket and pretty much reused everything else because everything else was "new:" When I did the head gasket this time, I bought the head gasket kit, so I replaced the o-ring on that restrictor thing this time.

I bring this up because one of the things I read that if you leave that restrictor out, you end up sucking the pan dry before the oil can drain back. This would obviously cause the oil light to come on. I am 100% sure I did not leave it out but could I have messed something up taking it out and putting it back in? The old o-ring was hard as a rock which is why I replaced it with one that came in the kit. The only reason I bring this up is because the oil light was not flickering prior to this most recent head gasket issue.


Other things I read that could be bad was the oil pump, bearings (obviously), plugged pickup. The oil I drained out was not sparkling. It had barely 1000 miles on it since the last oil change and was still fairly clean. But I changed it right after I got the car running. I did buy a cheap oil pressure gauge off Amazon as my last one broke. It should be here today so this weekend I plan on connecting it and running the car in the driveway and see what happens with the oil pressure as the engine comes up to temp..

What else do you guys suggest I check/look into?

Thanks for the help...