2000blacksi

What sup guys.. i have a 2000 civic si, with greddy turbo kit, i installed the kit myself, the minute i was done with the install i noticed my coolant was low. i have an intercooler as well, im only running 5lbs of boost. i drove the car like it was stock for the first 2 weeks. driving like an old lady cause i wanted to break in the turbo and i still had the stock clutch, then i got my clutch installed and had to break in for 500 miles so once again granny driving. and still i noticed my coolant dissapearing, now my car is broken in, and i started to over heat on the highway once, oit started to but it went away and got to its normal driving temperature. once again i noticed my coolant dissapearing with no sign of leaks. i am not blowing any type of smoke any waer, not the smallest trace of it, i once noticed a very small drop of coolant on the turbo heat shiled but thats it. could it be i didnt bleed the radiator for air when i put the coolant back in the car? when i put it back i just put the drain plug in the radiator back in and poured it through the radiator cap. also when my car was cold i tried to remove the radiator cap and coolant spilled out with the car off and cold. but once again my resevoir was definatley lower than it was 2 days earlier, i have 33,000 miles on the car and i checked all visual hoses and clamps and they looked good.. whats going on here??? could air in my cooling system cause a leak? is it my head gasket? what the hell is going on here? the car has only come close to overheating once... any help wii be appreciated
eddie

harryg

your coolant system can't be old enough to rust over or anything of that nature, so I wouldn't worry too much. flush the system and refill properly and see if it still leaks.

KekeK-18

Try to drive you car hard on boost, then check if there are coolant spitting out of the reserver tank, and see if the water temperature go up at all when your in boost and drop back to normal when you let go. If that's the case, you definitely have a leaky or blown headgasket. Hope you have the problem fix soon.

2000blacksi

would having air in my radiator make it leak from somewhere???

2000blacksi

ttt

black92si

your car can overheat if you didn't bleed the cooling system. top off the coolant in the radiator and braing the car to operating temps. then crack open the bleeder valve located on the thermostat housing and let it run till all the air is out. then fill the overflow tank. BTW, you do this with the radiator cap off. another way is to pick up a special funnel from an auto parts store that has a fitting that goes on the radiator in place of the cap. you run the car with the funnel filled with coolant till the fans come on and the thermostat opens. this should cure your problem. i also recommend honda coolant since it's pre-mixed. good luck!

2000blacksi

SWEEEEEEET thanx man i will do that tomorrow, you think that was the problem since i wasnt blowing any smoke, i hope its not the head gasket! so i shouldnt use regular coolant, do they sell honda coolant any where else besides the dealership like autozone??

by the way where is my thermostat in relation to the resevoir tank??

harryg

i would think that if your headgasket was bad then you'd be seeing a ton of different colors out of your exhaust

2000blacksi

thats what all the posts have been saying that ive been reading... im starting to lean towards the fact that i might have air pockets in my radiator, every post ive read of people losing coolant or overheating has been because when they changed/flushed the coolant they didnt bleed it for air pockets..

ok one more time please explain to me hot to "properly" bleed the system, some people are saying just to run the car with the radiator cap off, others are saying to remove some bolt by the thermostat(which i have no idea where it is or what it looks like) then to undo my radiator cap half way and run my car till coolnat starts to spill out then top off my coolant at the radiator cap and the resevoir tank.....

which is the right way to do it?

black92si

the bleeder valve will be on the engine side of your upper radiator hose. it looks like a brake bleeder valve. the coolant is unfortunately only available at the honda parts counter at the dealership. usually around $15 so it's not expensive. peace!

2000blacksi

will my helms manual show me how to bleed the system or show me where this valve is?

Ri5e

It could be possible that your water pump is leaking. Mine BARELY leaked and my coolant dissapeared pretty fast.

What you can do is, I think they sell some sort of dye where you can put it in the coolant so that you can use a blacklight, to see where the leak is coming from.

black92si

yeah it should. just look at your upper radiator hose, follow it from the radiator to the engine. you should see the valve sticking out of the housing facing towards the firewall. now remove the radiator cap, start the engine and let it warm up. once the engine is warm you can open the bleeder valve and let the coolant start coming out untill you don't see any air bubbles. top off the coolant in the radiator as you go. now, once the radiator is filled, you squeeze the upper radiator hose and re-install the radiator cap. this will ensure that no air is in the system. you can now fill the resivoir to the HOT line and go for a roadtest. i hope this helps you out!

KekeK-18

depends on how bad is the head gasket, if its only a small leak, there will be some white smoke plus overheat ONLY under boost and you won't notice it when driving normally. And if its the headgasket the smoke is white ONLY!

2000blacksi

no smoke at all man not one single puff.