alexisthemovie

Okay people, story time.

When I bought my car, it had a blown headgasket (that I did not know about) and a radiator that had stop leak poured into it. At this point, I am unaware of what is causing the engine to overheat.

So, right after I bought the car, drove it home, and noticed the overheating, I took it to Mechanic A (a honda/acura specialty shop), who diagnoses the overheating problem as a bad radiator. Okay fine, I pay about $700 for a radiator and thermostat job. (Yes I know, raped)

Flash forward a few weeks. The radiator's top seal completely bursts and coolant is leaking out of the entire radiator. I take it back into service and Mechanic A replaces the radiator under service warranty and tells me that the headgasket is bad. I get an estimate from them that was something ridiculous like $1400.

So I take it to Mechanic B who I have been pretty cool with for awhile because I stop by sometimes and just watch cars on the dyno, or just talk about cars in general. I had referred him several customers and got a pretty decent price on the head job. It was about $900 which included resurfacing of the head, pressure testing, sandblasting, brand new valve seals, headgasket, miscellaneous gaskets, new spark plugs, and oil change.

The car is running well after this. After this, I replaced miscellaneous items like brand new primary and secondary oxygen sensors and a check engine light bulb. This whole time I have been unable to pass smog and so Mechanic B and I spend some time diagnosing the problems. I was pulling like 5 or 6 codes at first but new oxygen sensors fixed most of them. Right now, I am still getting a cat deficiency, and low voltage codes.

About 2 months pass by essentially trouble free. Then last week, as I was driving around town (slowly, mind you), I noticed the engine temperature climb just above the normal point and so I pull over immediately. It turns out that the exact same thing has happened. The radiator seal broke and the entire thing is spraying coolant onto the header, block, and other hot surfaces causing it to smoke and smell quite a bit.

I take it back home, top off the coolant, and drive it back to Mechanic A where they look at it and basically tell me that the radiator is over-pressurizing causing the radiator to blow. I am also told that the low voltage code is actually the o2 sensor sensing coolant flow by. But, hold on a second. I'm pretty sure that coolant completely destroys an oxygen sensor, which was the reason why my original ones needed replacement. And so, I am told that it is Mechanic B's problem because it was likely that the headgasket was blown or the block was cracked.

Now, a cracked block is believable on a turbocharged engine that hasn't been resleeved, but not really believable on a near stock engine.

And flash forward to today. I dropped my car off at Mechanic B and later he calls me and tells me that the headgasket is completely fine and that my engine is putting out good compression numbers.

Okay, now I have several problems here. One being that I'm the consumer and am basically stuck between a rock and a hard place. Mechanic A claims to have used a Koyo radiator and, I'm 95% sure that the one he gave me was not a Koyo because there is a sticker on the bottom that says "Made in Indonesia". I trust Mechanic B's work and he has put more effort into helping me, doing free tests, etc.

One other thing is that my car is blowing smoke out the exhaust at above 6000 RPM which is basically when the butterfly valves open. The smoke is mainly white, but has no coolant scent. It smells like gas/oil.

What should I do?

EARLdaSQUIRREL

have them do a leak test on your cooling system and a leakdown test on your motor...

alexisthemovie

Well we know where the coolant is leaking from. The compression on the motor is consistent across all 4 cylinders.

I should mention that I don't really beat on this car. It is my daily driver and I almost always get above 30 mpg.

As of right now, my plan is to just get a full aluminum radiator and see where that takes me.

EARLdaSQUIRREL

unless your radiator is that "cheap" then there would have to be a reason your getting that much pressure...

if you put in a better radiator the pressure build up will just reveal the next weakest link (probably your hoses)

alexisthemovie

so essentially what you are saying is that the radiator is not the root of the problem?

Mechanic A did a sniffer test for me which revealed that there were small amounts of exhaust gases in the radiator. Is this a sign of a blown headgasket?

EARLdaSQUIRREL

easiest way to test for blown headgasket is to do a leakdown test, if the headgasket is blown bubbles will show up at the radiator cap