Water in the Oil in JDM Engine

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f22b1 coupe

Junior Member
First of all, let me say Tiger Japanese is an AWESOME company to buy a JDM engine from- after having my chain yanked by some other engine suppliers I appreciate their outstanding communication and shipping time in addition to the engine being everything I hoped for and more.

I did the works to the engine while I already had it on the floor (which I highly recommend everyone make their practice) and while doing the timing belt I pulled the valve cover and saw some water standing in the head, so I checked the catch can which was also full of water, I pulled the intake manifold (had to do it anyway) and it had some water in it (no surprise, its a D15B 96-2000 with the vertical intake). Finally, I drained the oil and it was murky brown and milky like there was a considerable amount of water in it.

So, my question is what is the typical protocol for purging contaminated oil? I don't want to screw with any bullshit chemicals, I'm guessing I should just do something like fill it up with some cheap oil, run it for several minutes then change it again.
 
hmm i hear alot about sea foam but havent tried it yet, when i did mine i ran cheap oil in it for a bout 100 miles and then changed it out like ur talkn.
 
Are you planning to rebuild it?

Shops usually don't charge much for cleaning the block/head.

I'd check the bearings at a minimum and make sure it wasn't running with that much water in it. Most likely, it was just rained on, but I would still check. If the bearings were worn, I'd go ahead and replace those as well as the valve seals/guides.

I'm not a fan of putting a used engine in a car though, at least not where performance is concerned. While the engine is out is the best time to have it "refreshed."
 
I didn't really see a need to "refresh" anything- all the hype about JDM engines is true, this thing looked brand spanking new when I pulled the valve cover. I did every oil seal on the thing except the pan gasket and valve cover, then did the timing belt, tensioner, water pump, thermostat, every coolant hose and drive belt. FYI to anyone thinking about swapping definitely do the input shaft seal on the tranny and rear main while you have the thing out in addition to everything involving the timing.

I just finished doing some other repairs to the car, I am waiting on a hose to come in at Honda and so I still have not run it. I will just run some regular oil through it and see what it runs like before I dump synthetic in. Basically this girl bought a 97 Civic DX with 167k on it and didn't ever check/change the oil because the hood latch was broken and wouldn't latch back. Tonight I fixed that so there will be no excuse this time around- it was a royal, royal pain in the ass to take the fender and grill off and replace that hood release cable, all those little snaps and weaving it through the core support. I also thoroughly cleaned and greased the latch and now everything works like new.

I want to put synthetic in before I return it to her just because I want to do everything in my power to make sure her money spent paying me and on a new engine is well worth it. I can pretend she's paying me to look out for her ignorance (which really is the case). As for rebuilding it Jorsher, I do have to admit it alarms me that they guarantee they compression checked it. If they ran it in the car at Tiger Japanese to test it, they could have harmed the bearings or valve seals as you said, but I'll it really looked to me like the water had just leaked in and the possibility that severe engine damaged happened with oil in it (albeit with some water in there) is still fairly slim.

Well cheers everyone, thanks for the input and I will report back tomorrow and hopefully my post will not involve the words "rod knocking" or "smoke out the tailpipe." I'll shortchange the oil change in it at 100 miles or less 8secHonda, thanks!
 
Alright, fired up today and not a problem outside of a timing issue (I thought) from putting the USDM distributor on the JDM head, but actually I now have a problem with the injectors I think. It runs like shit as if the timing is off but I used a timing light and got it set perfect and it still wont hardly accelerate and tries to flood on the low end if I pump the gas very much. I think the injectors from the JDM are higher flow, I used JDM block and head, then USDM intake and distributor. And, I used the JDM injectors and fuel rail because I thought I was doing a good thing by using the lower mileage injectors, but there's simply nothing else it could be. Anyone heard of JDM/USDM injectors being different? This is USDM D16y7 and JDM D15B (96-2000 non vtec). Same head and block, just different distributors and intakes.

PS there was a little white foam in on top of the oil on the dipstick after I ran it- should I change it asap or is a little bit not going to harm the engine?
 
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