cehcivic15

95 civic with b16a been noticing some loss of coolant...no puddles or drops underneath my car or no water in the engine bay. i been noticing it over the past 2 months, its really slow, ive maybe put half a gallon in over that period of time, but today i checked it and my reservoir is low again. no trace of water in my oil, no trace of oil in my coolant, so today i did a leak down test at the radiator cap and pumped it to 16psi and over about 5 minutes it bled to about 14psi. no missing or anything irregular with the way my car runs just this slow loss of coolant. if it is a head gasket...i have changed a couple before i always got the felpro i forget what its made of but its not the metal gasket....any opinions on what kind of head gasket i should go with....it mugen worth it?

on a side note, who sells starters for the b16 i work at oreilly auto parts and we cant even get them

cehcivic15

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}honda=life{

is there white smoke coming from the tail pipe???? your head gasket could be blown between the water jacket and the combustion camber.... and its slowly pushing coolant into the cylinders..... run a compression test and see what happens....yeah i would get a metal head gasket you will have better luck with those....

z6hatchboy

it shouldnt bleed down any, if you have no puddles then it may very well be the headgasket. Check the plugs and see what they look like

98civdx

generaly with a blown headgasket there will be oil and coolent mix,
white smoke would be another clue if its its blown.
if it were me id replace asap.

cehcivic15

thanks, there is no white smoke, and i wll do a compression test next...ill check the plugs and see if they look clean, clean is a sign of water right?

T3KNiQe

Damn this is happening with my B16a, but not sure if tis the headgasket or heater core?

I've had to slowly add coolant over the last couple months, but I have seen coolant leaking down on top my cat, then on to my driveway. Also the heat isn't as hot as it should be, so I'm thinking heater core is going bad??

Also I thought blue smoke was oil, and white smoke was gas??? I have a fuel managment program on the chipped ecu, so I always have a lil' white smoke....so I cant tell if my headgasket is blown. Also shouldn't their be a sudden drop in efficiency/performance with blown head gasket?

Pothole987

Oil out of tailpipe= Blue
GAS = black
HG = Anitfreeze.

When the car is cold, take the rad cap off, and start the car. if anitfreeze shoots out, (or up) then its a problem with the HG or head. Metal Gaskets FTW.

RVARGAS64

Had the same problem with 98; civic Gsr swap
found out i had multiple coolant line leaks...
not bad enough to see drips ..
check with fingers around where coolant lines hook into..
thats how i found my coolant loss

good luck..