Does this sound like a bad head gasket?
 

I have a 2002 Honda Civic. About a month ago, my wife said the heater wasn't working. I checked the antifreeze level and it was low. I filled it up and the heater worked fine. After a couple days, the heater would quit working. Filled it up - worked fine. Same story over and over. I eventually replaced the thermostat. Problem did not go away but I kept finding antifreeze around the top of the radiator area.

I had the car to 3 garages. All 3 said they could not find a leak - they all pressure tested it. Today, I took it to a Honda dealer. They said it could possibly be a head gasket? We're talking between $500 and $800 to fix. Is there anything else that could possibly be the problem?

The Honda dealer said a bad head gasket will cause the antifreeze to be pushed out of the radiator cap.

Thanks for the help! :)

Usually antifreeze will overflow in the resevoir. Try replacing the cap. Or you can pressure test your coolant system to see if your radiator and hoses have a leak.

Did you replace the radiator cap? I've had caps fail and leak. When they pressure tested, they were checking the radiator. The cap was off for that test, and was replaced with a gauge.

A sign of head gasket failure would be coolant in your engine oil. If you do your own oil changes, drain and look at the oil. Coolant is a 50/50 mix of coolant and water. Oil and water don't mix. It will be obvious if there is coolant in there. If the oil is clean... Check hoses, check the radiator cap. A shop can also tell you if there is coolant in the oil. Just ask them to visually examine the old oil.

Another symptom of a blown head gasket is white smoke from the tailpipe.

I actually replaced the radiator cap. It still leaked around the cap.

The guy at the garage said it will build so much pressure and the only place it will go out is the radiator cap. Normally, it wouldn't but I had too much antifreeze in the reservoir.

There is no white smoke coming out of the tailpipe. I checked the dipstick yesterday for the oil. A guy told me the dipstick would be "bubbly". It wasn't.

I'm just trying to definitely narrow it down and not spend the money if that's not what it is.

I'm going to look through the Haynes manual today and see if my buddy and I could possibly do it ourselves.

P.S.... this may sound stupid but could it possibly be vacuum hoses???? Someone suggested that.

Here's another question..... does the reservoir have one hose or two hoses to the radiator? In other words, is there a hose for the excess antifreeze from the radiator and another hose if the radiator needs antifreeze from the reservoir?

The reason I'm asking is because is it a possibility the overflow line from the radiator to the reservoir is plugged?

I just went out and popped my hood. The hose from the radiator to the reservoir was blown off. This happened a couple weeks ago too. I put a hose clamp on it. Could the antifreeze been leaking around that hose and not blowing the hose off until now?

Sorry for so many posts - I'm just trying to give everyone as much info as possible.

I just got home. I checked under the hood. The antifreeze looks like it is coming out of around the reservoir cap. I can see the antifreeze in the reservoir is bubbling - like air bubbles coming up through the antifreeze. Does this mean anything?

Does the dash temperature gauge indicate that the engine is overheating?

Is white smoke coming from the exhaust?

Is coolant present in the motor oil?

Is motor oil present in the coolant?

When you mentioned that coolant was leaking from around the radiator cap, I thought that the radiator itself might be bad. Later you mentioned a leak from the hose leading to the reservoir and now the boiling of coolant in the reservoir. Use the picture below to tell us precisely where coolant is leaking from:

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