Head Gasket Blown

[HondaBoy]

update, havent done shit. honestly havent had any time during the day to work on the old 3gee. i have started looking for another car, but plan to fix and drive the 3gee. nope, wont be getting rid of it, just wont be my daily drive after i get another car. anyways, i havent been getting but one or two days off of work, so this leaves me very little spare time to do anything.

[2oodoor]

I was reading your post about headers and thought you had it going.. dont give up !!!!

edit.my bad, I was looking at a year old thread...

[HondaBoy]

yeah i'm not gonna give up on the 3gee. its already getting good, so why stop? just cant seem to find time anymore for working on my cars. i'm only getting one day a week off, i'm getting pissed. but it does pay the bills. but yeah, i'm going to go ahead and do the work myself instead of sending it to a shop. my friend is down to work on it with me so i just need a free day.

[lostforawhile]

lwt me know when you are ready and i'll finish that part for you.

[HondaBoy]

well got the head off. here's the pix. gonna get it tested for cracks and whatnot. hopefully its nothing major or the block itself. inside the cylinders looked all good though, real clean. well, hopefully i'll have more time like this to get some more done.

[2oodoor]

pic of the old gasket? the valve side of the head?
cant tell anything by those pics,,, cool blue header though

[russiankid]

Get the head rebuilt. Your rockers look very dark, mine are brown.

[HondaBoy]

well i plan to take the head and get it checked out by a good machine shop. i'm going to ask my auto tech teacher and some of the guys i work with what shops are reasonable and reputable. i plan to take the intake manifold off before doing so though. i already have a new gasket for it so thats not a problem. maybe i should put some performance parts into the head. what i wanted was new high lift cam with 272 duration, new rockers and valve springs. but i dunno if i can afford it right yet since i'm trying to buy a new car right now. lets just hope it was that head gasket. i inspected it and couldnt find any spot that was blow between the oil and coolant passages. i'm going to let my teacher take a look and see what his opinion is. if it happens to be a cracked head or something like that i have a few engines lined up, either bottom end or the head i can get really quickly to replace if need be.

[Ichiban]

The 350 in my truck did the exact same thing. Compression was fine, but when the engine warmed up, it would foam the coolant and blow green foam out the surge tank. If you ran the engine hot with the rad cap off, you could see bubbles and smell exhaust in the coolant. There was, however, no oil to coolant contamination.

The cause? Both heads were cracked from exhaust valve seat, up the port into the coolant passage on cylinders 2 and 4, and 1 and 3 on the other side. It was confirmed by white residue on those plugs, and corresponding residue in/under the exhaust manifolds for those cylinders.

Best we could figure was that as the heads expanded due to heat, the cracks opened up. Which explains why the problem wasn't apparent while cold, or with the compression test.

As an aside, I don't think a few people understand what a leakdown test is. It uses a modified compression tester that applies air pressure to the cylinders, not the radiator, like the coolant system pressure tester does. They are not the same thing.

The leakdown tester can detect a blown headgasket if air is found to be leaking into an adjacent cylinder (bridging) or into the cooling system (bubbles in yer rad).

[HondaBoy]

hmm, i'm probably gonna pull the intake off it then take it up to school tuesday or wednesday and see if the things warped. if i find it to be too warped i may pull a head off another engine and have it rebuilt with a new high lift cam and valve train parts. cant wait to get this project done. should be pretty powerful over the stock configuration.

[AccordEpicenter]

im gonna bet its warped. I dont believe ive ever seen a honda head cracked that much

[AccordB20A]

Yup. They like to warp too

[MessyHonda]

time to slap in a VTECH head...lol

[AccordB20A]

time to slap in a VTECH head...lol

not just any vtech head. a doch vetech head

[MessyHonda]

not just any vtech head. a doch vetech head

only found in the motherland herself......JDMland....japan...

[HondaBoy]

right, vtec. like id waste any time on that. i'd have already had fuel injection. but now i have some plans to put a new high lift cam, new rocker arms, possibly new valves, possibly enlarge the valves using prelude valves with machine work. but for sure i want the delta 272 cam and i already have the weber carb and full exhaust. might get things port matched too. but this is since i've bought a new car and will have the 3gee for a n/a tuner. shooting for 140 whp with those mods. really need a manual tranny, i'm sure i'll trash the automatic.

[MessyHonda]

right, vtec. like id waste any time on that. i'd have already had fuel injection. but now i have some plans to put a new high lift cam, new rocker arms, possibly new valves, possibly enlarge the valves using prelude valves with machine work. but for sure i want the delta 272 cam and i already have the weber carb and full exhaust. might get things port matched too. but this is since i've bought a new car and will have the 3gee for a n/a tuner. shooting for 140 whp with those mods. really need a manual tranny, i'm sure i'll trash the automatic.

its hard to get power with out increassing the compression...you would have to shave the head...and get a nice port and polish to even get some power. my car is making like 120 and its fuel injected with stage 2 cam, headers, intake, obd1 tuned.

[HondaBoy]

finally got that crank pulley bolt off. bit of PB blaster did the trick. now i'll hopefully get to do some more work and get the old 3gee running again.

[1ajs]

is the head warped?

[HondaBoy]

i havent got a strait edge. i could take it up to school, but i dont have time right now. so what i'm probably going to do is take it down to this local machine shop that is well trusted by most of the shops here in town. they will check the head, which includes testing for combustion leakage of the valves and for cracks in the head and also the straitness of the head surface. that is $20, then $20 more to machine the head. might want to have the valves ground and seats recut. that will probably be a bit more. but looks like this is going to be a real winner. not going to cost incredibly too much and will likely be better than before. should be since a new weber 32/36 will sit attop the motor along with the header pipe and full exhaust, so better breathing will surely be noticeable. i'm trying to decide whether or not the get the car running or buy a Delta 272 street cam and wait a little longer. now if i do wait for the cam i can always install it later along with new rockers and springs. so i'll probably just wait on those. i'm just tired of not being able to drive my 3gee.

[2oodoor]

I told you, you would be spoiled by the 300 ponys.. huh huh huh. LOL

You will like the car with the weber, have them do a "competition valve job" then you port match the header to the head. Light up the ignition, burn 93...keep the junk outta the trunk.. keep the car light.
Get another DD, that is not so much of a toy bro..

[HondaBoy]

i'm going to try to get this head over to the machine shop tomorrow. its pretty close to my school, so i hope to find time to do that. i need to take the studs out of the head though. hopefully i will get out of class early and have time to do that. its about damn time i get this car back on the road where it belongs. its looking hopeful though.

[HondaBoy]

well picked dropped the head off last friday, picked it up tuesday. i put the intake manifold back on and thats about it so far. now i'm trying to decide if i want to get a new timing belt, tensioner and oil pump. since its all apart and accessable, it would be nice to do. but that'll set me back some. and i'll probably have to wait about a month before i can put that into my budget. so i will likely just get the car running. the timing belt is dry and free of oil and doesnt have more than 60000 miles on it, i replaced it about 3 1/2 years ago. so i think it should do ok until i can get a new one to put in a little later on. i want to try and get the head installed sometime this weekend or before next wednesday. here's some pix of the rebuilt head. they were able to get the broken manifold stud out, of which i have a new one.

[lostforawhile]

thats beautiful!!!!! make sure you know the direction the timing belt was running before, if you put it on running the other way after it's been run in one direction for 60000 miles, it could fail in short order, they take a directional set, it's a fiberglass strand belt remember,not a rubber one.

[2oodoor]

why is the cam on it already?
going by the interference (debockle) you should not have that on there when you set the head down and torque it. Unless you set up TDC and valve timing before putting the head on?? that sounds wrong.. lol