horent135

Here the story. A few months ago, my car start to hesitation in acceleration, but it never die or stall yet, just jumpy or struggling. I change the distributor and spark plugs a year ago. Recently I found out I might have a blown headgasket cause of the overheating and smell coolant out of the tail pipe. Could blown headgasket be connect to the car hesitation? Or I have a bad distributor?

This is on 97 DX civic with 225k miles.

techtalk

horent135,

Based on the symptoms that you have described, it is very plausible that you have blown a head gasket. There are a few tall tale signs of a blown head gasket:

One area of failure is the seal between an engine cylinder and a coolant passage. As the coolant heats up, and pressure rises, it will be forced into the cylinder during the intake stroke. This coolant will flash into steam during combustion and will be visible as a white cloud coming from the tailpipe (do you see this in your Civic? Or is it just coolant?). This steam cloud will be much thicker than normally seen during cold weather, and also have a sweet smell matching that of antifreeze. To determine the exact cylinder, there two tests can be performed. Visually inspecting the spark plugs will likely turn up one that is visibly wet or distinctively cleaner than the rest. A compression gauge will show lower pressure in the affected cylinder.

Like the problem of coolant in the cylinders, air in the coolant is also caused by a failure of the head gasket between a cylinder and coolant passage. Usually this will be happening at the same time as a coolant leak into the cylinders. The quickest symptoms to look for are overheating and low coolant level with no obvious leak. These symptoms also occur for other reasons other than a blown head gasket, however, and other tests are needed to confirm the problem. Test kits are available from many auto part stores that will show if exhaust gasses are present in the coolant of gasoline engines, and compression testing may show lower pressure in the leaking cylinder.

Sometimes a blown head gasket will occur in ways that allow engine oil to enter into the cooling system. Because this will rarely affect performance, symptoms can go undetected for a long time. Regular inspection of the coolant is the best way to catch this problem before further engine damage occurs. If any oil has mixed with the coolant, it will have changed in color to a light tan, close to the color of coffee with a lot of milk added. I had this problem with my old '91 MR2 so be sure to inspect your coolant color.

Sometimes a gasket can fail and cause a cylinder to only lose compression. The first indication of the blown head gasket is an audible hissing or tapping sound, which can be difficult to locate, as it sounds like a bad lifter or rocker arm. More severe cases can see a noticeable loss of power from the engine. This can include the hesitation upon acceleration that you describe. Depending on the location, you may see the air leak on the engine. The most accurate test for this problem is a compression gauge.

Hope this helps you out buddy!

horent135

Probably confirm I have a blown headgasket. I do have oil in the coolant, but it is not brown, it more like black, the color of oil (only top layer) in my overflow bottle, but the rest is still green.. Is my engine that severe damage by telling that I have lost of power from the engine in which cost the hesitation. Im just seeing which has more connectivity to my engine hesitation from the distributor or blown head gasket?

horent135

Bump...
I just did a head gasket replacement. Hopefully this will fix my overheating issue. I drove it hard with a/c on, seems it normal but it was a warm day. I will drive hard again on a very hot day and to see if that really fixes my overheating problem.

I still have a hesitation issue tho. Replacing the head gasket didnt fix the problem. I did change my whole distributor and spark plugs about a year ago. I try putting fuel injector cleaner as well. I also notice, it hesitate when stop at red light as well. The car hesitate in acceleration, but it never die or stall yet, just jumpy or struggling. I really have to floor every time.

EL Vap133

Do you have any CEL's? What about exhaust leaks? Do you still have your original catalytic converter?

motegicivic

Did you or a shop do it?

Was a compression check done?

I was told with higher mileage engines, that after a head gasket is down it raises compression and can affect the upper end of the engine.

As for hesitation, might be age related.

EJ8mike

How old are your spark plug WIRES?

I was getting sum hesitation on acceleration too, I had to replace the original wires (12yrs. old!), problem solved. I checked the resistance against the new wires and they were much higher.

horent135

No CEL light, no exhaust leaks and cat was changed at 150k miles. Anyways, I took it a tech, they said it the rotor in the distributor. Apparently, either I went to a shady shop that did my distributor or I got a defect one. Anyways, that was the main problem, I also replace the wires to be on the safe side as well too.

horent135

A shop did it, I didn't check the compression after the job, but it seems to run fine, no overheating issues yet.

motegicivic

Did you just do this above? and the car is now ok, or that was done before the head gasket?