lunareg

I know what your thinking: headgasket..

So am I, but none of the obvious signs are there, in fact theres alot of inconsistency here and im stumped.

first off the motor is a d16zc (sohc vtec) boosted. I just rebuilt it 2,000 miles ago, so the headgasket is new, I used a felpro, I should have a oem honda one which I already ordered so I know that -might- have been a problem.

The water doesnt stop when the car warms up, its constantly dripping out of making a puddle. I dont have a muffler so its dropping right out of the pipe.

There is also grayish smoke coming out of the exhaust but it doesnt smell sweet like coolant, it smells like gas almost, kinda smells like a snowmobile actually. It comes out way worse if you hit the throttle.

pulled my plugs and they weren't wet, when i open the oil cap theres no smoke, it smells the same as exhaust, same with the dip stick.

the coolant level never dropped, car never overheated

emptied all the coolant and there is no oil in it.

emptied the oil and there is no coolant in it.

the head bolts appeared to be tight and all where the same length.

we pulled the head off and the gasket appears to look ok, I cant visually see anything wrong with it.. nothing that screams, thats what wrong. the pistons tops arent steam cleaned or anything.

I guess it could be the very beginning of the a problem or something :shrugs: It literally started smoking as I was pulling in my driveway and I have only let it idle for about an hour while scratching our heads.

anyone had this happen before?

88_hatch_ls

the whitesh grey smoke is usually an indication of it running rich do you have a wideband o2 to tell you what mixture your at?

lunareg

no im looking into getting one actually, but I dont at the moment. My car was tuned 1,000 miles ago, I would hope that the tune wouldnt have gotten thrown off that easy :/

88_hatch_ls

the best thing to do at this point would be to get an wideband o2 and see what your mix. is at they SHOULD have used one when they tuned it to get an acurate reading in the first place..

lunareg

yeah they certainly did. I dont know how I could come home one day with smoke pouring out from under my hood and out of my exhaust and my fuel just randomly got rich out of no-where. The water dripping lead me to a head gasket problem, where would the water figure into a rich situation.

88_hatch_ls

in that case it probably is the head gasket, i thought you ruled out the head gasket thats y i was saying it could be running rich.. just because the head gasket "looks" good doesnt always mean it is.. i would replace it and see if the problem stops

lunareg

oh yeah for sure. the car is still laying with the head off because I had to order the gasket from honda, they didnt have any instock. The only thing that I could possibly think of is I threw a bottle of fuel injector cleaner in my tank acouple days before this happened..

idriveahonda

Condensation?

Mixed with leftover residue from within the exhaust piping/muffler?

Hell, sometimes it is that easy.

twocross

Have you taken it back to shop where you got tune up from? Anybody who is half-way reputable would want to know that a tune up they did only 1k ago is acting up.


Could be condensation in fuel system also. Use a product such as HEAT, it acts as a condensation remover for fuel tank and lines.

lunareg

I was hoping it was something like this, but then the massive amount of smoke coming out made me think something else must be wrong.

@twocross, I called up the shop he thought headgasket as well. they are over an hour away from me, so driving the smoke machine up there or even getting it towed just didnt seem like an option at the time. I will try throwing some heat in there, i actually have some, but at the moment its taken apart waiting for the new gasket.

twocross

With head off you need to take it to a machine shop, and have your cylinder head machined to square the surface of the head. The alloy head almost always warps.

Also, your cylinder head bolts are a one time use only! Purchase new head bolts from a Honda dealer. Grease the threads, and the underside of the head bolt to allow for consistent and accurate torque settings. When you get head back, follow the manual torque sequence, and go in 10 foot pound increments to gradually bring it up to proper torque spec.

2LEM1

iTrader: (1)

Sounds like a bad ring/rings mixed with condensation.

Doubtful it's the headgasket.

lunareg

yup, I know that my bolts are one time use, I never have reused them, i know the torque specs.. I look into the head being warped, I sure the hell hope not

lunareg

oh come on... there is no blow-by to my catch can, no blow by out of the oil cap, no smoke anywhere out of engine bay.. aside from that we did a compression test before taking apart the motor to start ruling things out. the motor is a fresh rebuild, with proper break-in, dyno tuned not some hillybilly jank job..

nickeynick

My Del Sol is having the exact same problem. STOCK MOTOR!

I just changed the head gasket and now it won't stop smoking. and a lot of water is dripping from the entire exhaust system(at the points where it connects and the tail pipe).

What can it be?

grumblemarc

iTrader: (4)

Compression test it.

nickeynick

I did a compression on mine. about=180psi each cylinder

lunareg

Well to make an update I changed out my headgasket for the hell of it with an OE honda HG and its still smoking. Grayish smoke, smells like gas. The water dripping has stopped though, at least for now. The smoke get terrible if you give it any throttle.

I know that this bottle of fuel injector cleaner i dumped in there was the day before this happened so I told my tuner about this. He thinks that its possible the stuff could have loosened something up in the fuel system and now one of the injectors might be stuck open.

I as well did a compression test before I took the head off and all cylinders where within 5 across the board.

none of my fluids where mixed when i drained everything out of it. The oil looked fine, I had just changed it 100miles ago.

this is what my spark plugs looked like, they had about 1,000 miles on them, mind you they are the ones that where in when it was on the dyno so im assuming the oil on them was from all the WOT passes. Because im not loosing oil anywhere, and there is no oil in my catchcan.

He told me my only real options where to either ship these out and get them sonic cleaned and hope for the best, or pick up some new one. He said the tune could be thrown off if my injectors wherent perfectly clean when they tuned it, but they should have been since they only had about 3,000 miles on them.

But how can you be sure you have a stuck injector? he told me to check my plugs, and one of them did smell a bit like gas, its the first picture the one that looks shorted out.

standy xsi

did you ever fix this problem?