jheikkila54

Hello, New to the form, and new to hondas, done alot of research however, and i mean alot. now for the novel:
I just bought a 95 Honda Civic DX Coupe as a daily driver and project car, it has a d15b7 engine, I am doing little by little work on it on the weekends, and when it comes to the deep winter im gonna park it and really finish it up. So my plans are out of the way, it has 190,xxx miles and it appears to burn oil, doesnt look blue, but definitely smells of burning oil, especially when decelerating or driving at a really low idle, like through a parking lot, and it has a little smell when at really high rpms. it smokes, but not like a bat out of hell, and only on high acceleration, maybe at deceleration, but cant see. It does have oil caked all over the the block and part of the head, whether that matters or not, i plan to clean that off this weekend. It starts like a champ, but when I turn it off it doesnt immediately stop, it winds down and comes to a complete stop in a sec maybe two, someone once told me it means its got bad or going bad piston rings. the guy i bought it from replaced the valve seals and the valve gasket, Im under the assumption that the problem is the valve guides cause i get a dec amount of oil in decliner 3 spark plug chamber. So I plan to do a mini-me swap, since my buddy has everything to do it but the gaskets, the z6 head has only 50k miles on it, so all the guides, seals, and valves should be good, while i do that im gonna put a y8 head gasket it, new timing belt, serp belts, water pump, ect ect. along with a the z6 intake mani, a header, and brand new exhaust, and clean the oil pan out. Now what I am worried about is doing all this and than it turns out that the piston rings are whats causing a majority of the oil burning problem. Now I would really really not like to pull the engine cause of lack of tools, cherry picker and engine mounter, and id rather do this in a 3-4 day weekend, but if need be I will have to break down. So whats everyone's opinions and thoughts?

blkSi

I mean, that's really the only way you're going to find out for sure. You can't always guarantee that any used engine is going to perform like it was new. You could replace the head (with possibility of bad guides) with the z6 head, and find out it is still leaking. Then think that it was the rings, which in turn it could have been the used head you installed...? Just my .02