cryoflow

Where to begin… I’ll just start with the timeline of my symptoms I have experienced over the past year or so. Around the beginning of last summer, my AC started to blow out warmer air, so I figured it just needed more refrigerant in the system, and I neglected to recharge it since having A/C wasn’t that big of a deal to me. After driving it for a couple months into the summer, my radiator fan stopped kicking on, and there was a knocking sound that started to develop inside the engine bay.

The knocking sound would start to knock faster when I would accelerate, and so I tried to do some preliminary searching, but since I am in an apartment and do not have the tools or space to work on my car to narrow down the issue, I decided to take it to a well-reviewed auto shop nearby. They did some testing, and declared that it was a bad A/C compressor bearing.

I decided to have the A/C compressor replaced, and that fixed the knocking sound that was coming from the engine bay. They also recharged the A/C system, made sure it was properly pressurized so there was no refrigerant leaking or anything. I thought it should be good to go at this point. However, after getting the car back, the A/C system would still not blow out cold air, and the radiator fan still wouldn’t kick on.

They took it back to the shop to do some more diagnosis, and declared that my Civic had a bad PCM, and they couldn’t fix this since they don’t have the means to reprogram the immobilizer, and told me it would need to be taken to a dealership. Since I’m in college and don’t have that kind of money, the car seemed to drive perfectly fine otherwise (no overheating according to the temp gauge, no weird idling issues, etc.) so I neglected replacing the PCM.

Fast forward to a month or two ago, and my car starts to idle very roughly on cold starts, especially with this cold winter here in the Midwest. However, it wouldn’t idle roughly ALL the time, maybe only like half of the time or so. Shortly after, the check engine light decided to come on. I get the codes scanned, and I get a P0301 code (cylinder 1 misfire) and P1298 (electric load detector circuit high input voltage).

I finally decide to take it into the shop again, mainly to get the rough idling fixed, and they spend a few days with it, according to them my valves need to be adjusted, so I get it done and it seems to have fixed the rough idling on a cold start issue.

However, I still seem to be experiencing issues.

1. My radiator still needs to have coolant added to it every few weeks, but I don’t see any leaking on the ground or anything

2. The heat in the car works well when its moving, however when it’s stopped it doesn’t heat as well, or sometimes will just blow out cold air.

3. When turning on the car and having it idle, I hear this clicking noise every 5 or so seconds coming from the engine bay, seems like it keeps engaging and disengaging the radiator fans. Only seems to happen when I’m NOT in park.

4. The car smells like coolant I think? Not sure exactly what I’m supposed to be smelling but after driving the car I can smell something unpleasant. According to the thermometer gauge, the car’s temp never goes above half so it doesn’t seem to be overheating (unless it’s a bad temp gauge or something).

5. White exhaust fumes on cold start, but goes away when the car has been driven around and the engine is warmed up.

I read the Cooling System Q&A post that was stickied on this forum, and I seem to have some of the symptoms listed in there, however I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole if that’s not actually the cause. Where do I even start to try to diagnose these issues that I’m having?

VIDEOS:
Radiator fans clicking/constantly turning off after I take car out of Park
White exhaust fumes on cold start