Welp, I've been rebuilding this car from a dead heap and I guess I can say "it's been fun". My latest maintenence on the car was the head gasket. It was burning a bit of oil and had a sputtering problem. So i did that, changed the dizzy cap and rotor, coolant flush and other minor items all in one go. And here's where the problems come into play:

Until yesterday the car was driving flawless for about two weeks. Running through
each gear and the entire RPM range clean. It was driving like a CRX. Then I noticed it was running warm during city driving. Coolant seemed fine, nothing too big to notice. Then yesterday I started it up in a parking lot and it started to smoke little white smoke. Sweet smelling coolant. Great. Take it to the gas station and op the hood. I smell burnt coolant under the hood. Then I noticed oil all over the valve cover and fuel rail in a spray pattern. It seems as if one of the grommets for the valve cover bolts wasn't down enough (wouldn't be tight enough without a washer) and was causing an oil leak.

So, I fixed the oil problem with a washer but this coolant problem eludes me. After work tonight I started the car and it ran fine until it got up to temp. Then whenever i'm idling it smokes horribly. at about 10mph or so, it either stops or i'm moving too fast for it to be noticed.

Also, the temp gauge fluctuates. Driving 70 on the highway it'll go from normal position (1/4 up the temp gauge) and jump to nearly overheating bar and then down to middle. When i'm idling if i press the button to close my sunroof, the temp gauge will rise slightly.

Since it's obviously leaking coolant into the cylinders, did I blow another head gasket? Also it's odd that it drives absolutely perfect after it burns whatever is in the cylinders out, that is, until i go to an idle again. Going to change out some more minor parts tomorrow. Just seeing if anyone had any suggestions as to what to check.

 

Ok, before you changed the headgasket did you have the machine shop check to see if the head was warped in any way???? Had your engine been over heating alot before you changed the head gasket? What head gasket did you use, OEM???? What engine do you have in your car?

 

did you clean the old gasket off the head and block?

 

It's a D16a6 with 309k on it. about 4k which are mine.

It wasn't overheating much prior to the head gasket replacement. Just giving me a sputtering during acceleration and after going anything over half throttle throughout any gear.

Used an OEM head gasket. Removed and replaced everything exactly to spec. Unfortunately, I was doing all of this ona limited time frame before work so I wasn't able to take the head to a shop and didn't have a straight edge suitable to test it myself.

And yep, I cleaned off the old gasket, broke apart like hell when I removed it.

Thanks for the advice. I'm gettting a couple days off work, so i'll probably be doing another full tear down of the engine to see what's going on.

 

Went to tear down the motor and checked all the lines on the engine. Then i noticed the air line from the intake to the valve cover is barely sitting on the nipple. turns out it was too loose, even with a pressure clamp on, and kept coming off. Replaced the hose and got some screw down clamps and solved that problem. Then I went and got a new coolant reservoir since mine had the bottom corner broken off and my patch job was shabby at best. Also put in some radiator stop leak stuff.

So far, the car is keeping cool on the highway, no visable coolant leaks. It does get hotter (mid gauge to 3/4 way up) when in stop and go city traffic, but it's 90 here today, so i can't blame it.

Oh well, hopefully that does the trick. Thanks again all.