I blew the motor on my 97 prelude a while ago, due to popped radiator hose and motor overheated. hope it's just the gasket, but i drove the car for at least 30 miles with no coolant.... i then found a gas station and filled up the radiator, the motor barely fired up after cranking for half hour, then lots of steam coming out the tail pipe... and I made it home, then the car has been parked in the garage for 2 months.

finally I opened up the motor today and i see the head are full of water mixed with oil, looked soooo nasty, and some parts are little rusted. since the motor is teared apart, it's a good chance to do a clean up, it has 75k miles.

how would you clean it up? like the piston top, combustion chamber, valves...etc? what should I use to clean them?

should I replace the head studs? what else should be taken care of when you take the head off?



[Modified by mike2016, 4:27 PM 5/10/2002]

good time to get new pistons perhaps? or maybe sand them down lightly with fine grade sandpaper...then polish them with a dremel..

easiest way would be to send it off and have it blasted with high pressure steam.

Driving 30 miles with a blown motor? No flatbed service in your town?
Mike I am sorry to say but I believe your pistons might be damaged, and if they were not I would not trust a dremel in my combustion chamber. There are too many variables there.
Probably a great time to change pistons and maybe he rods

it was a long story... sigh... but the motor still fires up, and it revs fine, but I'll see tomorrow... the head is almost off, it's a pain in the *** to get that god damn "intake manifold mounting bolt" off!!! I'll shoot some pics when the head is off.... thanks a lot for the replies guys. I'm really appreciated.

btw, I'm leaving the block in place, do i have to take the pistons off to clean them?


[Modified by mike2016, 5:42 AM 5/9/2002]

forget using abrasives, a good industrial degreaser sprayed on the pistons and left for an hour an rinsed will look brand new. we use this stuff called cherry degreaser, the distributor renames it, i use it for everything. try simple green or orange based degreasers they take off carbon too.

Pics are here
http://www.lismotorsports.com/Mike/H22/

I took some pics of my motor today, would you guys please take a look at the pics and let me know if anything's wrong with the motor? the gasket looks fine but it's supposed to be blown. the motor was blown and steam coming out from tail pipe, i did a compression test before and I remember the number was

#1 80psi
#2 120psi
#3 90psi
#4 110psi

i'll be ordering a new headgasket soon, do I need to do anything else since I have the motor apart? thanks guys.


[Modified by mike2016, 4:31 PM 5/10/2002]

have the head checked out, rebuild everything (pistons, rods, blalnce and polish the crank, new valves, guides, springs and retainers, and the head shop will clean your head and everything will be brand new.

And by the way, a dremel with one of the polishing tips works real well on cleaning the internals of an engine, but be careful.

I'm not really looking into rebuild the motor, I just want to bring it back to life. because i'm going to sell the car soon. do I have to replace the pistons, rings and valves? the car has 75k miles on it, and it ran strong just like new except it needed some valve adjustments.


[Modified by mike2016, 7:41 PM 5/10/2002]

24" extension with a 12mm socket from underneath...you should be able to sneak it out pretty easily.

--Ian (who's gotten too good at pulling his head...)

By the way....the best way to blow a head gasket is to put cool water into a motor that went dry and over heated. You always have to let it cool down first before adding cool water.

thats what I did, the motor was running overheated for more than half an hour or more, I filled water into the radiator then it wouldn't fire up anymore. I kept cranking it for at least half hour and it barely fired up and I drove it home, with bunch of steam coming out of the tail pipe, couldn't even see anything in the rear view mirror.

Hehe, is that JDM newpaper in those pics?

those are CDM(chinese) newspapers.