Hi,

I'm new here. I'm asking a question for my older brother. He has a 1989 Honda Accord. He noticed that the gas mileage has dropped recently. He put in new plugs and did a basic tune up. It still has one cylinder that misses from time to time. He also noticed a bit of anti-freeze in the oil. It is not very much but it indicates a problem.

He did a compression test on the car. All cylinders measure about 170 lbs except one which measures about 150 lbs.

We are suspecting a blown head gasket. Has anyone ran into this problem before? Does anyone have any other ideas as to what else could cause this? Any other tests that we can do to confirm this is the problem or that something else is wrong?

We are about to use the compression tester to force air into the cylinder and look for air bubbles in the radiator and see if we can see anything else weird.

Ideas??? Siggestions???

Thanks

:D :D :D :D :D

 

When oil and coolant mix its usually a head gasket.

 

We are about to use the compression tester to force air into the cylinder and look for air bubbles in the radiator and see if we can see anything else weird.

That might work; or you could get a radiator pressure tester and, with a warm engine, see if it pushes coolant into a cylinder.
Pull out the spark plugs [hot engine] and put some white paper towels in front of the plug holes and crank the engine to see if there is coolant spray on the paper towels.
Old school test.

 

Thanks for all the replies. He also got someone else to look at it and since it is a very small amount of anti-freeze in the oil, we are going to wait until it warms up a bit to replace the head gasket. Right now, it is about 25F outside and we are true shade tree mechanics.

Should we buy new haed bolts when we do this? I read somewhere that some bolts should not be reused once they are torqued. I also saw that on a TV show one time. I'm not sure if it applies to this though.

Again, thanks for all the replies.