Shft@9GSR

ok now... I am running 11:1 pistons, 85mm bore and a stock head gasket CNC'd to a 85mm bore size, and ARP fasteners in my gsr/LS/VTEC. No milling or anything to block or head. Block was step decked to help reduce chances of blowing headgasket.

Now have blown headgasket and burning coolant in 2 cylinders. Car has 2k miles on it. Plugs before gasket blew were all brown (no white for lean mixture and no signs of detonation). Now #2 and #4 are white and 1,3 are still brown. Car is blowing out LOTS white smoke and radiatior is low on coolant.

I run 93 octane gas for normal driving and don't beat on it at all because of lower octane gas. If I'm gonna race it, I put 100 octane in.

Question: will running 93 octane gas with 11:1's and light load daily driving cause enough detonation to blow the head gasket?

I think the head was incorrectly torqued. engine is not leaking coolant onto the ground, just running into cylinders.

Any thought would be appreciated. Thanks


[Modified by Shft@9GSR, 4:29 PM 5/24/2002]

hybridreams

You should be perfectly safe with 11:1 compression on 93...

Shft@9GSR

Thank you very much for that information.

next question... why #2 and #4 only? no leakage into #1 or #3 Do you think that the mechanic didn't torque the head correctly (either improper torque setting or incorrect sequence?)

Also, coolant not leaking outside the motor. All coolant is burning into combustion chamber. Oil in oil pan is still clean. Although only driven like 2 miles after white smoke started. Slight oil/water (milky oil) buildup in valve cover on oil cap.

Could it be a cracked head???? Hope not. Car has not been driving hard at all. Occasional 8K bursts but total of about a dozen trips to redline...after break-in miles and never more than 1st gear through top of 2nd or maybe 3rd. With roughly 100octane gas in it.

Car has like 2000 miles on it now.

ARP calls out 70ft.lbs. on cylinder head nuts/bolts... Acura calls out 63ft.lbs.

Could this variance be enough to cause the problem??

Chubz

I dont understand how u could blow your head gasket at 11:1. Im running 12:1 and I use 93 octane. Never had a problem with detonation, just oil consumption but thats the price a pay for always hitting VTEC. My compression psi in every cylinder is 300+. You should do a compression and leakdown test to confirm a blown headgasket.

Kamin

yes run a compression test at least and see what the numbers look like
who built the ls/vtec?

tinkerbell

when my head gasket started leaking the no. 3 s.plug turned shiny black...

and the top of the no. 3 piston turned shiny black.

it could be any reason why you have the problem.

you need to pull your head off to find out.

OR

if you didnt do the work, take it straight beck to who ever did and get them to fix it for free.

t..

Shft@9GSR

Ok as for how... Don't know???? That is my first problem.

Second... Acura Dealership (Acura of Libertyville) for those Chicago area people.

As for weather or not its the head gasket or cracked head I can't tell you yet.

reason for suspecting headgasket is that it's showing all signs. Milky substance in valve cover, blowing white smoke, #2 and #4 plugs are white, and im missing some coolant.

Coolant was going someplace when I got the motor rebuilt, but didn't know how well the dealership bled the system so I added coolant to resivoir once to see if it was just a bleeding problem... then last thursday, I pulled up to a stop light and the damn thing would not idle. And every time I hit the throttle to keep it going, it blew white smoke. So I drove it about 2 miles (carefully to get it back to work and left it until it got towed to the dealership that did the rebuild.

Motor has about 2K miles on it since rebuild.

I don't know of how many Honda's actually blow headgaskets in stock form but I doubt very many unless there are obvious problems.

I know mine is far from stock but this is what was done to help fight this problem.
But in my case, I used ARP hardware, and had the block step decked (sleeves were a couple of thosandths taller than the rest of the deck. (same as o-ringing head) to reduce/eliminate if possible blowing headgaskets.

My personal opinion is that either the dealership didn't torque the head to the ARP spec. Or due to negligence on the dealership, which could lead up to now.

I'll explain... When I got the car back, they put the PCV valve back in the new motor, and it was broken!!! (physically broken) into 2 pieces. I drove the car and noticed it sounded odd. Got it home and started looking around for problems. And that's not all, they could not get the idle down to stock. it was sitting around 1800 rpm's. They were blaming it on the aftermarket TB. So I said that I would get it all taken care of because they were going to charge me time to get it working correctly. I knew it would have been a usually easy problem to fix. So I took it home and found the broken PCV and thought that OK here is the vacuum leak causing high idle, so I replace the PCV and still had high idle. Come to find out 2 days later and a couple of trips back to the dealership to complain and lots of swearing in my garage, that they were still blaming this on a incompatability problem of the TB. Well I took it home again and found that they used an ITR TB gasket!!! which on a 95 will not work!!! due to FI thermal valve on TB which is an obdI item. Fast Idle thermal valve doesn't exsist on an obdII cars. It's something different on the OBD II's.

When this was brought up to the dealership, their response was... " well you were using an ITR oil pump and ITR cams so we figured that it needed an ITR TB gasket." My response is..... "it's a 95 OBD I car... all type R's were OBD II. Are the gaskets the same? Are they even the same part number? And finally what type of TB is used on my car?" Obviously the guy who ordered the part felt bad, but the thing that I didn't get was that when I explained it to the Acura mechanic, he seemed rather puzzled! Which seems odd that the Acura trained mechanic got puzzled by the fact that he used the wrong TB gasket. I don't blame him totally but I figured that he would have at least checked it out. it just seemed odd to me that the customer was explaining the difference betweeen the 2 gaskets and the 2 TB's. I was pretty scared at that point, and now am scared that they are going to be the ones to fix the problem... for free ( I hope! )

OK so now that I have a partially blown oil pan gasket from the broken PCV valve and now what seems to be a blown head gasket, and a whole lot of f*&king headaches... I will not be paying for all of these problems to be fixed! ( Again I hope! )


Sorry about the Ranting.... just venting!!!!!

Thanks for the help and insight.

slofu

hope that they didn't use the ARP torque spec- too tight- stock specs only (even with ARP hardware); can easily cause gasket distortion/leakage. was the head milled just enough for a good seal? this should be done whenever the head is pulled, since the surface always distorts with changes in pressure (i.e. when the head bolts are removed). (also, i don't know that a reconfigured stock headgasket originally made for 81mm bore will seal properly, even if CNC'd and used with stepped deck; for 85mm, i'd use Cometic, unless they just do the same.) lastly, did the builder install the headbolts in the correct pattern so as to insure a good seal, i.e. outward from the center as the helm factory manual shows?-from the tb install, sounds like they might have missed something else. good luck.

tinkerbell

the answer to HOW is because someone else did a lame assed job building your motor.

from what you have described your headgasket is not fitting your engine properly, hope they used the RIGHT headgasket!!!!!!!!

damn, you have got some problems, i really hope it all works out for you

t..

PS everything happens for a reason, even if it is just to teach us a lesson...

Shft@9GSR

Ok just what I was looking for... someone to say which specs to follow. I saw the variance and didn't know if that would be enough to cause problems.

I was just thinking that... Is it possible that the head is cracked? Not to mention in 2 spots... #2 and #4 cylinders?

I didn't have the head milled at all. Nor the block decked. But I can also assume that Acura checked it before they decided to bolt it to my new motor.

As for pattern of torque... I can only go by "I followed all the standard assembly directions", said the Mechanic.

and as for all my other problems with this motor rebuild... I can only assume they f*%@ked something else up in the process. This is why I am determined to find out the actual problem, so I know weather to blame the dealership, or blame " the cost of a hobbie". Either way it will be fixed and I will finally be able to drive the car to it's potential.

It would just be cheaper if I didn't have to pay for this fix. (this way I can spend more money to make the car even better!!!)

Thanks for your help.

Oh yeah... what are the chances that they didn't bottom out one of the headstuds? Do the headstuds seat into a water jacket or any thing (farshot) like that???

Shft@9GSR

The motor itself was built properly, but assembled half assed!!!

I have not had this much problems with the car and this is my 3rd motor.

( I keep trying new things) I'm not a dumbass that blows up stuff. I actually have all 3 motors to try out my next feat.

I think it's going to be a forced induction setup. maybe in a crx.

tinkerbell

it doesnt take much to screw up a head gasket job, specially if it is done in a rush...

cracking a head is pretty hard, in 2000 miles, depends how bad they screwed up...but i doubt it.

head should always be milled before replacing a head gasket if you are doing the job right!!!

t..

Shft@9GSR

Thanks for the help. I would have hoped that they would have checked for any warpage before installing the head on my new motor.

Thanks for the help/insight.