[:@] i am getting ready to throw this thing away even though i started all this problem lol

ok here it goes,

i was driving down the freeway, for about a half hour, before this no noticable problems, when i pulled off the freeway, car dies at light. i go to start it, wont start, 3-4 times, then it finally starts, i take it to the next drive way and check, no oil in engine, completely dry, i drive about 10 min to a gas station and finally put oil in it, (now you might start laughing a whole lot, but try and help me first then laugh lol) i filled the enigine with enough oil to go more than half way up the dip stick...... sad isn't it.... so i start the car, and yea, enough pure white smoke to fill up the whole parking lot, i am far from my college, and dont know the area. i didn't know at the time that it was more than half way up the dip stick, so i figure i can just run off the excess oil, so i drive down the street to a empty parking lot, and drive around for about 20 min and finally the smoke stops enough that i can drive down the street but there is still way to much smoke, so i get it to a honda dealership and they tell me i blew a ring before looking at the car. but before i took it there i called my friend that has been working on hondas for years, so i know he knows what he is talking about. he tells me that i could have blown a ring also, but the only thing that didn't make sense is that the smoke was pure white, not any black or blue smoke at all. so i have honda do a mechanical diag, and it was $90, and this is excatlly what they wrote for the comments,

radiator fluid and oil is coming out of radiator and radiator will not hold fluid. driving vehicle could possibly result in engine seizing up due to overheating.

now to me that doesn't make any sense, as far as needing my ring replaced, but yea, i dont think they relized how much oil i had put in there

so i leave it there for 3 days, and go on my instinct i have it towed to jiffy lube and this is what i they did for me
changed oil
changeed oil filter
replaced air filter
also replaced raidiator, there was a crack at the top of it

so when i went down there to pick it up, car started up but was still smoking, i ran it around the area for about 3 min, and basically ran the excess oil out the system, it stoped smoking and haven't smoked at all sense, i got out the car to get my stuff i was getting ready to leave, and when i got back in, my car was overheating, the needle was all the way up, so jiffy lube looked at it, they couldn't find nothing at the time, one thing they did find though, was that my water pump was leaking just a little bit, the person that found it, had said that it shouldn't be a problem and just to keep on top of it, so i left.....

i came back the next day, and they said they had fixed it, and that it hadn't overheated, so i drove from there back to houston, and it was about a 30 min drive on the freeway, needle did not move at all.

the next day i get in the car and go to start it, and it didn't start on the first try, i think it was the second. then after about a day or two of it doing that and getting worse, it finally wouldn't start. it would crank but not start. so then my first instinct is it has over 111,000 miles, change the spark plugs, so i finally got it started by pumping the gas and took it to auto zone and changed the spark plugs myself, now the spark plugs that where in there, had oil on them, so i figured thats why my car wouldn't start, after it started up fine, so i went home, but then it started again, it did the same thing, wouldn't start once or twice and just got worse, it got to the point where it wouldn't start hot or cold, if that made a difference, so then i took it to a shop and they told me that if couldn't be the plugs, said it might be the distributor, but this was just from listening to it, i took the battery to auto zone and had them check it, they said the battery was better than good, i tried tighting the battery cables down more, and that didn't fix it, so i left the car at the shop for 5 days, when i picked it up, they told me that it had, some electrical problems and that they fixed them, that excludes, doing anything to the distributor, but the car still had a problem starting, they said that the gas tank had water in it, and that until i got that out, it would have problems starting, so i filled the gas tank up, and put some HEET in there to try and get the water out, then i went home, the very next day, i tried to start my car and it wouldn't start, i tried for 45 min straight, wouldn't not start at all, i was pumping the gas, and when i did, it didn't seem as if the car was getting it, you know when a car is hard to start and you pump the gas, you can kinda of hear the gas going into it, and it trying to start, then it gets enough, starts, well it wasn't doing that.

so the next day i felt as if it could be the plugs, and that maybe i did them wrong, so i bought some new ones, and took the ones i had just put in there out, they had been in for about a week, they had oil on them, but not as much as the first ones, when i took it to auto zone, they told me that there was enough oil on them for the car not to start, so i changed them, went to start the car, didn't start up right away but finally did, i took it around the corner and went in the store for about 10 min, then when i went back to the car it wouldn't start, felt the same way with me pumping the gas and it didn't seem like it was getting it, now on the way there, the car didn't seem like it had its usual power, i poped the hood, oil was fine, i checked the coolent lvl, and it was a little bit below half, i filled it up, the car was hot so i let it cool for about 10 min, then i went to start it and it finally started, when it started i didn't really pump it, i might had hit the gas like twice, so as i was on my way home, i could tell that it was driving horriablly there was almost no power, when i got home it was over heating, i am thinking it was overheating because it was hot outside and that i was trying to start it for so long, it hadn't overheated since the raidiator had been changed.....

so this is what i am thinking, i dont think its the water in the tank, i dont think there is enough in there for it not to start at all, especailly since i changed the plugs and it started, but i am thinking, fuel pump, fuel filter, water pump, distrubiter, any thoughts, anything you need to know or hear or whatever let me know i will get it for you, also if you stay in houston, if there is anyway you could come see it, that would be way better, i dont think its the ring but i really dont know, it hasn't smoked at all....

 

just so you know, pumping the gas on a fuel injected car won't do anything to help it start. your fuel pump primes up enuf fuel to start your car, and hitting the accelerator doesn't deliver any more gas until your car is actually started... it is possible that your car isn't getting sufficient fuel, but pumping it while cranking it won't give it more...if yer water pump was bad, yer car would still start. so cross that off your list. when u go to start your car..turn it to the on position but not far enough to crank it... you should hear your fuel pump prime up in the back of your car (buzzing sound....it primes enuf fuel to start your car)...if you hear the buzz your fuel pump is fine...

next time it doesn't start. take out one of your spark plugs, put the wire on it and touch it to a ground (chassis, engine block, etc.) while you crank it... if you don't see sparks then there is a problem with your ignition system...it could be a number of things like your distributor cap or distributor rotor... if you've nevre changed these it's probably time to do so...new plug wires wouldn't hurt either you are supposed to change them whenever you change your plugs....you also might have water in your distributor cap...i think that car has the ignition coil contained inside the distributor...and from my experience these often go bad as i've put lots of distributors on my civic...you can test hte power to the coil with a volt meter....


anyway, do what i said to see if there is any fire when it doesn't start....if you get no spark then your problem is with your ignition system... and if you do then it's probably a fuel delivery problem... come back and let us know how you make out.

 

I think you car overheated and blew a headgasket. This may have been cause by not having enough oil in your motor. After you filled it up it with oil, you allow it to cool down enough to start it up allowing your coolant seep through your head gasket so now you are blowing white smoke. I have seen overheated car blowing a seam on the radiator so that may be correct.

After you picked your car from jiffy lube, you still had drive it around to get rid of the excess oil? Where was the excess oil coming from?

I think you will need to pull off the heads and get it inspected. If you have a lot miles on the block, you should get a replcement motor because the damage has been done.

Good Luck!!!

 

ok.... so today i go out to my car, and i go to start it, the first time it doesn't start but the second time it does, i think i could hear the fuel pump when i turned the key and didn't start it, now the only bad thing is that, it over heated, now it is really hot today so i dont know if that had anything to do with it starting or overheating, now i had filled it up with coolent yesterday and thats all gone, it went right back to half in the coolent, but on my way home, i stoped at a stop sign and there seemed to be a hole in the coolent box, just a little one, enough for some to spit out, it was either a hole or the cap wasn't on there all the way, but i dont think that would cause the car to over heat

 

if u got a new radiator, it could simply be that there is air in your coolant system and it needs to be bled...theres a valve on the head of yer engine right by the top radiator hose.... loosen that and run the car till it gets hot...coolant will come out of that valve... when there is a steady stream, and no bubbles, its been bled....

but it seems you are losing coolant pretty fast which leads me to believe that you either have a massive leak somewheres or your head gasket is gone. head gasket can usually be told by the presence of coolant in your oil (shows up as white on the dipstick) or oil in your coolant (not hard to tell)....but i think u can still blow your head gasket without either of those happening...correct me someone if i'm wrong on that...if your burning coolant, however, you should see thick white smoke out your tail pipe, and i'd say it would have to be a lot of smoke with the amount of coolant you are losing...you could get a pressure test done to determine if htere are leaks in the system and if that turns out ok then i'ts probably your head gasket...but this temp. problem is a totally different problem from your intermittent starting, so remember when u fix this you still have that starting problem to deal with...

also, sometimes poor grounds/defective circuits can cause your guages to read improperly... for instance, poor grounds used to cause my heat guage used to jump up to hot, while the car in fact was not even overheating...it would jump up and down wiht blinkers, lights, etc... most likely not your problem but worth some thought.

good luck with sorting out these probs.

 

With the hard starting, it can be cause by the blown head gasket. A bad gasket can allow oil and/or water to get in the combustion chamber. This will foul your spark plugs.

 

ummmm ok i think my head gasket is blow and i went on the net today to research it a little, and i found this stuff that says it can fix it, now i rather have it taken apart and doen, but yea i am a college student away from home, i really cant afford to pay a shop to do this lol, so i found this website that says it could fix it, what do you think

http://www.rxauto.com/technical.html

tell me what you think, i want to try and give this a try before i break down and spend all that money

 

I dunno if that is gonna work. If your headgasket is indeed broken and that is the cause of your car not starting, the head gasket has to be completly fried. It has to be so badly broken that more than one cylinder is completly losing all compression. If you have a ratchet and a spark plug socket, you could do a compression test to see if the head gasket really is broken.

 

how could i do the compression test?

 

get a compression gauge...unhook your dizzy so the other plugs won't spark....remove a plug and screw in the compression guage, crank er over till it goes thru 4 compression strokes and whatevre the gauge reads is your compression.... i believe normal compression is like 150-190... i'll assume yours is going to be really low if your car isn't starting.... i had 30 psi compression on a cylinder before and i'd still start... so do that on each of the 4 cylinders and come back here with the results....

if you're at all comfortable working on cars, you could probably do the head gasket yourself....it's not a hard job at all and you'd save yourself a ton... you'd have it done in 2 hours tops... a shop would probably charge u 5 hours labour plus the gasket and that's basically rediculous...i'd say get a haynes manual and tackle it yourself. all there is to it is like 4 valve cover bolts and 8 head bolts. hardest part is putting your timing belt back on in time, but theres marks on the pulleys for htat anyway so even that's easy.