I have only had this stupid car for two months, and already have put in a new radiator, new water pump, and new timing belt.

Now I have all the classic signs of either a blown head gasket, or cracked or warped head. I went through a cracked head in my ford escort that this replaced. The 1.9L in my escort handled a head replacement very well.

I have not torn into the d15 yet, but if it needs a head, how well do these things hold up to changing heads? I've herd so many bad things about replacing/rebuilding the top-end without touching the bottom end. I did it succesfully on my ford though.

I just need to know if i'm best off rebuilding the whole thing, or replacing the head, or getting a whole used d16z6 to swap in. the car has 201k miles on it. The engine ran great until now. now it blows white smoke, and water out the tail pipe, overheats, and over pressurizes the cooling system, it hasn't got water in the oil yet... not to mention it runs like total crap now. I could also do the mini-me swap if the block is likely to hold up.

I'm hoping i'll get off easy and come away just replacing the gasket... but this is not the first time it's overheated, so my hopes aren't too high that the aluminum head is not damaged.

 

post this in the engine section, it will probably get more attention

 

if you are doing the work, go mini-me. the block should be fine. i drove mine for a month or two when i had to top off the water everytime i drove it, and it must have oerheated 100 times, and when i finally could afford not to have it for a couple of days and to get the repairs done (before i started to do everything myself), and the head was slightly warped and the gasket was toast. the block was fine, and i should have done a damn VTEC head. if you cant do it yourself, just get the Z6 swapped in.

 

Pulled the head off, and the gasket was blown in several places. We checked the head for cracks, and we checked with a feeler guage and straight edge for warpage... The head checks out fine surprisingly. so it looks like i'm cheaping out and just doing a gasket set...

I am going to get a few maintenance things like cap, rotor, plugs and wires while its apart though.

On a side note this is the easiest engine to take apart... I did a GM 3100 v6 and it took two days, my ford escort took a day... this one only took 2 hours... good amount of room to work, and very straight forward to work on it... now I have to order parts and put it back together...


Maybe some other time i will do the d16z6, or the mini me... but for now i'm going to stick with the d15b7.

 

That is what makes hondas so fun to tinker on and improve horsepower, they are really easy to work on

 

Here's a link to some pictures. couple good ones of the toasted gasket... I'm going to put some more in there later on.

http://community.webshots.com/album/545028353FjSATv

 

It lives again!

As easy to put together as it was to take apart... except the one nut on the intake manifold that takes those two extra joints on your finger that you don't have...

I just put 21 miles on it without a problem, so i'm happy.

 

Thats good to here

 

I have a question

HOW DO YOU LOOSEN THE CRANKSHAFT PULLEY BOLT?

 

with an impact