idles fine but chuggs when you give it gas
 

First post. My son has a 1999 civic and as he was driving it began to loose power and chug and lurch along. He then discovered that the temp gauge was maxed out so he pulled it over. Had it towed and the radiator is bad has a large crack in it. Our shade tree mec cant seem to pin point the cause of the engine chugging and lurching. It idles fine but when you give it gas it chugs and sputters and does not rev up. There are no fault codes showing problem. He thinks maybe distib. I had the cad convertor and Ox censor replaced 16 months ago. Could the cad have went bad again. Car has 180,000 miles not sure how much money I want to spend on trial and error. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks Chris

Re: idles fine but chuggs when you give it gas
 

Spend money on accurate diagnosis by a professional?

Re: idles fine but chuggs when you give it gas
 

Bad bad bad news. Could easily have blown the head gasket, warped the head or just plain ruined the engine.

With 180k it might be simpler to find a good running low mileage used engine to drop in.

Did the distributor cap and plug wires get wet?
Melted the coolant temp sensor off?
Lots of possibilities here.

Re: idles fine but chuggs when you give it gas
 

As Ezone mentioned it could be a blown head gasket. Rent a block tester from either Autozone or O' Reilly's (free rental programs) and purchase $9 testing fluid (blue color) .. watch block tester vids or DIY's on how to use.

Compression test would be useful too... check out Eric The Car Guy (youtube video) on how to do a compression test. Compression tester may also be part of the free loan tool programs

Distributor is a possibility as well and there are several related spark test tutorials to be found online.. that are easy to follow and will save you $.

D-series engines are fairly easy to work on and thanks to sites like this, people like Ezone that share their knowledge...what can seem daunting is made much easier and often times even gratifying.