I just put an 01 GSR in my 1998 Civic LX. It runs great, and I've never seen white smoke coming out of the exhaust, but I can smell burnt coolant (seems to come from the engine though, not the exhaust).

The problem is: I've been running through coolant. My reservoir goes from MAX to MIN after about three 30 minute drives to and from work. I pressure tested the radiator, and it holds steady at 16 psi, no leaks. I stood under it while it idled on a lift, and not a drop anywhere.

My oil cap looks clean, and the oil on my dipstick looks new (only driven it for about 6 days).

Does this sound like a blown head gasket? Is there anywhere else coolant could leak internally or externally and burn off but not drip? If this is a headgasket I want to fix it ASAP, but I don't want to waist my money if it's not the problem. Please help!!

 

check all ur hoses n thurr connections. .if u smell it then it.s obviously leakin somewhurr n it.s not comin out the exhaust n not n the oil!! good luck.

 

me, i fill my tub will coolant and with ina week, its gone, but i never over heat.. its polly still empty

 

If your loosing coolant and you can smell it burning i'd say its either leaking at the back of the engine, say around the thermostat housing and dripping on the exhaust or you have a blown headgasket, blown headgaskets don't always give you milky oil, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

 

My coolant seems to have stabilized. I kept trying to fill the resevoir to max, and it kept going down, but now that I've just let it go, it seems to stay half way between max and min when the engine is hot, and around min when it's cold.

Is this normal? I've heard the engine will burn off excess coolant if there is too much in the resevoir, could this be what I'm smelling since I kept trying to fill it back up to max?

Where does everyone else's resevoir level stay when the engine is hot?

Thanks for the help!

 

i would say headgasket, had similar problem before..

 

Not to seem like im thread jacking here but i am curious about this issue i am having a similar problem where my engine runs a lit hot every 4 days or so due to im losing coolant somewhere but cant visually see a leak the head gasket was recently replaced and the head was milled due to slight warpage and no water in the oil

 

try a compression test, get a better idea of whats going on

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by JoeDel &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">try a compression test, get a better idea of whats going on</TD></TR></TABLE>
Just going to say the same thing.

I'd guess if its not that its leaking somewhere, I can't think of anything else theres not much to the cooling system.