Hi,

First of all I apologize for my english, don't be rude at me because of that.
I'm not sure what happened to my engine, hope you can help me diagnose/repair.

Specs:
-Sleeved B18A1 @ 84mm
-B16 Head
-CP Pistons 12:1
-Golden Eagle head gasket
-ARP Head Studs
-Hondata S300
-4k miles on it

Here's the story:
The engine overheated 2 months ago, like 3/4 on the stock temp gauge, I refilled radiator and never saw the temp needle come up again.
Hondata overheat protection was set at 220°F and CEL comes on a few times because of this.

Since then the car begin misfiring/choking on low rpms and gets difficult to start up.
Sometimes white smoke gets out the tailpipe, seems to happen randomly under acceleration.

I already replaced radiator (mishimoto), thermostat (180°F), spark plugs, nothing helped. The radiator fan kicks in at about 200°F.

Removed head yesterday and found small amount of water in all cylinders, the head gasket is "complete", just like peeled off between cylinders. I noticed small chips in cylinders 3 & 4, maybe lean condition? I did not clean the pistons.

Here are some pics of the block and head gasket:






Piston 1:


Piston 2:


Piston 3:

Piston 3 Closeup:


Piston 4:


Sleeves:




Can i just replace head gasket?

 

what does the bottom of the head look like.

 

When you over heated, you should have shutdown immediately with the key and heat on to cool the engine down. Beyond over heating it looks like detonation. I recommend a full teardown and inspection. Also, I would recommend that you get that block cleaned decked.

 

1) you have some serious detonation going on...
2) your second piston picture.. looks like the left side of your piston is melted.. i dunno if its the angle, but none of your pistons look like that

other then the two stated above

it looks from your HG that it wasn't torqued down properly and had lifted around the water jacket.. it looks like cyl1 or cyl4 is where u had the leak.. Were you over heating after the car was at operating temp, did you have any bubbles in your resivoir

 

Some pics:




No evident damage.

I didn't notice that, i'm gonna take a closer look.


CEL comes on when temp hits 220F (it happened like 4 times), the cluster temp gauge stays normal, just below half.
I have bubbles in radiator when the radiator cap is off, no bubbles in the reservoir.
Also, no oil in coolant or coolant in oil.

 

leak around the water jacket.. pretty sure thats your problem aside from the melted piston and dent your fine..

 

Bubbles in the radiator usually mean combustion gasses are leaking past the headgasket into the cooling system. Cylinders 2 and 3 appear much cleaner (steam cleaned) also evidence of a blown headgasket.
The marks on top of your pistons are signs of detonation which also can blow headgaskets.
I do not see any signs of melted piston...
I would pull the rod caps to inspect the bearings for damage from detonation, measure the block/head for straightness, and reassemble...
Take some timing out of it so it doesnt happen again.
Good luck.

 

Actually it looks like cylinder 2 and 3 is where the headgasket blew, not 1 and 4. See how clean they look?
Is it even possible to overheat BEFORE the car was a operating temp?

 

I concur, however, you rarely see bubbles in coolent from cyl's 2/3. But i can see how you came to that conclusion, because those pistons do look pretty clean.. lol.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^ That left side doesn't look funky to you?

Compared too

 

Is it possible to detonation occurs only in cylinders 3 & 4?

 

I would run an air filter, or atleast get the crap out of the intake before I ran it again.That is NOT detonation, it junk in the intake system. This place is down to engines 99. Holy Crap.

 

Engines 99 LOL!
I stand corrected...Being the chambers looked undamaged from foreign object debris, I would have guessed this to be detonation and the resulting headgasket failure...

 

Semi-off-topic but - how would one clean a block surface similar to the one pictured? A razor for the old gasket material but what about the dark stain? I tried it on an old block: brake cleaner + a scourer did the job but left light scratches on the surface; any suggestions that won't mark the surface?

 

If you look at the pistons you see the hot spots between the cyl walls. So you have a heat happy engine that will require more octane and less timing.

 

So is it detonation?
or is it FOD (foreign object debris)?

OP, might wanna run a stronger coolant concentration. The rusty coolant jackets/sleeves suggests you dont have enough coolant/anti corrosives in you mixture...

 

its detonation imo

 

detonation usually looks like the piston top was sand blasted with an aggressive media. Those piston tops look like they were damaged by some sort of foreign debris. Ever look at pictures of someone's motor with a dropped valve? When the valve gets broken up and thrown back up the intake and into the other cylinders, the damage looks similar, there's just a lot more of it.

 

Like others have said, It is not detonation. obviously you guys haven't seen or don't know what a piston that has seen det looks like. Just because you read about what it is supposed to look like doesn't mean you should give advice on it. Usually on edge of the crown on the exhaust side first, like 00redsir said, kinda sandblasted looking. Not like it happens randomly around the piston is all areas. Fawk, nice advice. Also it looks like the gasket was leaking in between the cylinders as you can see on the block and headgasket. Get a precision straightedge and check the block and head to see if they need resurfacing or not.

 

No question your gasket is blown but the cause of the blown gasket could be attributed by a host of things..one would be a sunken sleeve.the sunken sleeve could force water to enter the chamber on the intake stroke resullting to a lean mix on the combustion stroke as evident on the color of your valves..also, Hondas aluminum head and block construction is so sensitive to sudden temperature extremes same as when you poured tap water when you overheated that could result to warpage of either head or block or both in extreme cases.I usually advice to cool the motor down completely before adding or replacing water to prevent extreme temp changes leading to warpage..detonation signs on piston tops don't resemble deep,sharp edges. If we entertain the piston top damage as detonation, check your injector on that particular cylinder so we can rule out detonation if they are spraying the right amount of fuel as the others, assuming you're not tuning with individual cylinder fuel trim.

 

look like your running just alittle lean, straighten your deck and head and retune. looks like ports 2,3 flow better than 1,4. after you get it running put a temp gauge to the header on those runners and if their hotter then you need to richen it up alittle on 2,3.
imo