I've been trying to figure out the cooling issue i'm having with my car.

It's a 94 ex coupe, with a stock jdm d15b vtec in it.

After it gets up to operating temperature I start to smell coolant, pop the hood and you can distinctly smell it comin from the radiator. So, I changed the radiator, hoses, cap, intake manifold gasket, and several old hoses on the intake side of the motor that were coolant hoses.

When I originally got the motor, the water pump and t-belt, and thermostat were changed with brand new ones. I know they could be faulty out of the box, but the pump seems to be doing it's job fairly well, and the thermostat is opening.

Today, I go outside start the car and let it idle and cycle the fans a couple times. I still see bubbles coming up out of the radiator even after the fans have cycled a couple times, so now i'm starting to suspect headgasket failure.

The motor has never gotten hot according to the oem gauge in the cluster, but I got curious and hooked an aftermarket gauge up to it just to see. It's an autometer water temp gauge and it reads up to 210* or so and you hear the fan kick on, then it drops a little bit.

The overflow hasn't filled up at all, I emptied when I changed the hoses and stuff and it was empty when I just checked it 30mins ago. Even after a driver and beating on it a little bit.

I'm stumped, and don't wanna go tearing a head off to replace the gasket or replace the motor depending on what the bottom end looks like, if it's not either or. The motor is absolutely clean, when it arrived to me, it didn't even have the typical oil stained valvetrain and doesnt use any oil at all, so I kinda wanna keep it lol.

I plan on driving this car over 2000 miles at the beginning of the year as i'm moving to SoCal, so I need to make it as reliable as possible, thanks in advance for any input.

 

Air pocket in the block/head, keep filling the overflow once it sucks all of the coolant it needs, the overflow will only fill/empty a small amount. With as many parts/hose you've replaced, it probably has a lot of air in it. Hot/Cold cycle the engine at least 4-5 times, this will allow the system to pull in coolant when the rad is cold, and push air out when its hot, sooner or later it will all be coolant flow.


Unless you think it has a bad head gasket, go buy some head gasket leak detector. I use the blue stuff and hover it over the rad opening, if it turns yellow, needs a headgasket.