87 Civic cooling system help

[Remedy]

My carburated 1500 (D15A2) civic EW1 (115k mi) is pushing out coolant. The story goes like this, the impellar fell off the water pump shaft and then it came to me. I replaced the water pump hoping that there was no damage. Got it all back together with new belts, hoses, etc and took it for a ride. Idles rough and takes a long time to warm up. Last time out I replaced the radiator cap with a new one, filled the system with water and left the overflow empty. I went for a 10 mile drive and then checked the overflow. It was nearly at the top with water even thought the engine temp barely reached 1/8 of the normal range. Left it sit for an hour but the water stayed in the overflow. Drained the system and the water is milky white, maybe a stop leak had been added or is this consistent with combustion gases entering the cooling system? The only cooing system components I haven't replaced are the radiator and the thermostat, but they are both gonna be done next.

I need some advice, I suspected the head gasket all along but sometimes I jump to conclusions and do stuff that doesn't need to be done.

 

[Remedy]

more iinfo

Since I had no input yet I just kept on doing my thing trying to narrow down the trouble. I put in a new thermostat which is lovely and all but I mainly did it to make sure I have a good one in there with a good gasket. So warming up the engine to do the compression and leak down tests I left the radiator cap off. I did this mostly to make sure I had all the air out of the cooling system. Once the system was full I had a steady bubble of 1 per second at the fill neck. Looks like a head gasket for sure right?
So compression was 150, 150, 145, 160. The first 2 cylinders I forgot to hold the throttle open, but I was supprised how high they were anyway.
The leak down test showed minimal leakage around 20% and the most was going into the crackcase. I expected air bubbles in the radiator but didnt get any.

Any suggestions for what to do next?

 

[DarkHand]

Sounds like a headgasket issue to me, too. Change it out and let us know how the car behaves after that.

 

[Remedy]

Changed out the head gasket, car runs cool and doesnt pressurize the cooling system. Now I have this idle sputtering to work out.
I can't get the engine to hold the timing, I set it like it says under the hood and it mostly lines up, but it jumps around alot.
I checked my EGR and cleaned it, also checked the float bowl vent and it holds vacuum.
Its probably a vacuum leak and I am just really not excited about spraying my hoses down with carb cleaner. Can anyone tell from what I have described if that is the case or more likely something else?


Thanks