She gone and broke it..

[Racing Rice]

My wife's '95 Civic LX is pooping out on us. I have a feeling it's a head gasket, but I want to see what you all think.

- The car fires up fine.
- The temp rises and at idle the temp guage reads normal. However, if you take it for a drive the temp guage will begin to climb. It will drop back to normal if you stop and let it idle again.
- The car is bellowing white smoke, and starts to miss when it warms up.
- I pulled the plugs out and inspected them, the #4 plug (? furthest from the distributor) has a little oil on it. Probably why its missing, eh? lol

I guess I need to do a leakdown test on it and see what I can find. Anyone have any suggestions?

The oil on the plug indicates that it could be rings, valve guides, or head gasket, right?

[ebpda9]

did u check the thermostat ? and the cylinder #1 is by the timing belt

[Racing Rice]

Originally posted by hondaman-iac
did u check the thermostat ? and the cylinder #1 is by the timing belt

Not yet... and Okay, its Cylinder number 1.

One more thing I forgot to mention..

One other thing, the car was out of coolant. I put coolant into the reservoir, but it did not appear to be take any out of it. How does it pull the coolant from the reservoir into the radiator?

[ebpda9]

the cap will open and the coolant will be sucked in. did u remove the rad cap and fill the rad too ? i kno my teg loses coolant thru one of the gaskets. maybe that was the demise of the headgasket. also the plug has oil on the thread and body or on the tip ?

[Racing Rice]

Oil is on the tip, they are newer plugs so they look fairly clean but you can feel oil on it when you run you fingers around it and see it between the electrode.

I did not put any in the rad cap, should I? I thought I read in the owners manual not to fill it that way.

[JspecCrxSiR]

ok check to see if ur oil is fine that it doesnt look like chocolate milk if it is than ur head gasket is blown if u have oil in the spark plugs check the valve cover gramets change them out witht the valve cover gasket as well

[Racing Rice]

Originally posted by JspecCrxSiR
ok check to see if ur oil is fine that it doesnt look like chocolate milk if it is than ur head gasket is blown if u have oil in the spark plugs check the valve cover gramets change them out witht the valve cover gasket as well

I need to drain the oil, the weather has been crappy and I've been lazy. Its not the valve cover gromets or the gasket because its on the spark side of the plug.

[GT40FIED]

Certainly sounds like a blown head gasket to me. If you're too lazy to check the oil to make sure, you can always pull off the radiator cap and let the engine run until it's at operating temp and watch for bubbles. That's not a fool-proof way to check it out, but sometimes it works. You could also have a cracked block or bad rings. Either way, there's only one way a plug can get oil on it...and that's either from the top (gasket) or the bottom (rings, block).