So in the last month, I've rebuilt my head, and after that, I had to re-change my intake manifold gasket, and after that my 93 si was running great, for about a day...

after I changed that gasket last friday, I only put water in it and had to make a 100 mile drive to see my girlfriend, who promptly made me go to the bar and celebrate (get drunk) my car running, and I spaced draining the water and putting in anti-freeze. I didn't drive the car for the rest of the weekend, and it was a chilly one.

When I started the car on monday to go to work, it sounded like the water pump had to grind some ice to get going, and at that point I knew I probably fucked up pretty bad . I drove it around town a little to see what the problem could possibly be, and the car had noticably lower acceleration and power (loss of compression in a cylinder, I guess), and when I got back and popped the hood, it was spewing coolant and oil out of the spark plug caps in the top of the engine. I am pretty sure it's not supposed to do this.

Other symptoms it's having include: Idling very erratically i.e. after having the car on for about five minutes the rpms jump from 2-3 thousand as though the car were cold or there's no water in the cooling system (There is). Also, the car only blows cold air, even after the car reaches operating temp.

I'm hoping this is only the head gasket, but what are the chances of a cracked block, or heaven forbid, a cracked head? I'll be tearing into it this weekend again(expletive), but have any of you guys had a problem like that? Or know what might cause it for certain? Thanks guys, any help or advice is greatly appreciated and goes a long way towards me fixing the car instead of pushing it in front of a train.

 

ouch. I say you need to pull the head off and survey the damage. Good luck.

 

I would say blown headgasket... but i think this is a chilled headgasket =p

water got up in the head, froze, and boom. I think your head may be fucked, and if its not, your headgasket is. keep us posted, take pics of the head / gaskets


oh and what kind of shape is your radiator / hoses in now? are they cracked or frozen?

 

Hoses seem to be okay, and so does the radiator, as far as I could tell. I am hoping very severly that it's only a blown headgasket, but if not, maybe it's time to pull the ol' h23 vtec, eh? Thanks for the replies, by the way.