car overheating, white smoke, and burning coolant

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A

arroshiz

Senior Member
yeah here recently my car has been acting funny and its been smoking a lot and i know i aint burning oil, and the only thing i can think of is that its burning the coolant out of my radiator cause everytime i check it its low again, ;and i have to refill it all the time but i have no leaks anywhere, out of hoses or anything, i was readin another post and somebody said could be blow head gasket, and thats what i'm thinking it is, cause it looks kinda wet around the bass of my head all the time...what else could this be besides blown head gasket..could it be a crack in there somewhere?
 
i agree, it could be a crack, but most likely its a head gasket
if it was a crack, youd probably get coolant in the oil.
 
if ur car is an ls - go buy a vtec head hehe then put the head gasket on and do lsvtec might as well while ur @ it - if not - just change the head gasket(have fun)
 
it was rebuilt 20k miles ago, original miles- i'm thinkin was like 180k or somthing like it so its got a lot of miles on it, but...ya know
 
i got the head off, and i cant seem to find anything wrong with the head gasket...but idk what they are supposed to look like...the new one i got was the wrong one cause idiots at napa dont know what they are doing so i gotta send it back...but yeah my cylinders were full of anti freeze/water...so something's leaking
 
Originally posted by arroshiz@Dec 22 2004, 09:12 PM
i got the head off, and i cant seem to find anything wrong with the head gasket...but idk what they are supposed to look like...the new one i got was the wrong one cause idiots at napa dont know what they are doing so i gotta send it back...but yeah my cylinders were full of anti freeze/water...so something's leaking
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stop being so damn stubborn, it's the head gasket.
 
Surveeeey....saaays..........................Headgasket. Tell him what hes won!!!!! A lovely trip to autozone and a chance to see new and exotic car parts....
 
Oh and don't use a shitty autozone or NAPA gasket, get a real OEM one. The aftermarket ones are crap fiber gaskets, the Honda one is OEM and is the best IMO.
 
Well head gaskets generally don't look bad. They are layers of metal and only meant to be used once btw. And make sure that your new gasket is perfectly flat. Head gaskets are subjected to high heat and pressures and just get tired. Something between those metal layers blew through. Overheating the engine wears them out faster, but they all wear out eventually. My 93 DX at 145K miles had a blown headgasket, it might have been on it's second head gasket as the gasket material was so unlike Honda OEM ones. And my 94 Si made it to over 300K miles before it started to leak on her original head gasket. No white vapor, but just that the oil level started to rise inside the engine.

If you've taken apart your engine to the point of being able to see the whole top part of the gasket, you'll have to change it now. It works like an oil plug crush washer or more graphically a bottle cap on a glass soda or beer bottle. The flat metal makes a tight seal around the two parts coming together. Once you take it apart, you cannot make that tight fresh seal again. Also make sure that you torque down the bolts exactly to spec. Not too tight.
 
Originally posted by nfn15037@Dec 23 2004, 12:15 AM
Oh and don't use a shitty autozone or NAPA gasket, get a real OEM one. The aftermarket ones are crap fiber gaskets, the Honda one is OEM and is the best IMO.
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Good point. I would go with OEM also..
 
ok finally all put back together, and i cranked it tonight...first thing it did was shoot some water out the muffler i guess some that had gotten down in there...i had it runnin for a minute or so and i still had some white smoke comin out..i wasnt sure if this was normal and would just do that for a while or what...but i stuck my hand behind the muffler and i had moisture on it..the air comin out was basically steam..i let it run till it warmed up..it didnt overheat but it still had water/antifreeze in it so idk....is it normal to keep smokin for a few minutes after its changed? or could my head be screwed up?
 
Run it open header and see if it smokes, all that shit can sit and burn in your exhaust, the same thing happend (still smoking after hg change) on a friends car and we almost pulled the head again until I thought about this.
 
you will probably see smoke for a couple days.. I had/have a saab that blew it's gasket and when we got it started back up it had a lot of water that exited the muffler.. the rest is gonna pool up in spots. Does you exhaust use baffles or is it chambers? You could take the muffler off and see if you can drain the water out if it is in there.
 
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