Here a few months back, I had a head gasket leak, and in the process a bunch of oil sludge and grime made its way into my coolant reservoir tank and caked itself to the walls. The head gasket leak has long been fixed and I've tried to manually scrub out the coolant overflow tank as best I could, but due to its shape, it's hard to get in there and get all of it.

What kind of creative ways have you guys found to scrub, soak or otherwise clean out your coolant reservoir?

 

I'd just buy a new one. The $20 it would cost new is worth the time it would take to try to get it as clean as new.

 

Carb cleaner.

 

lol i looked on rockauto.com and they're $2.68 + shipping. That's less than a can of brake or carb cleaner costs! O_o

Maybe I'll just order a new one at those prices!

 

fill it with OEM Honda brake fluid and let it sit overnight. I promise it will just fall right off when you dump it.

 

I got one from the junkyard with gunk but yea im gonna try to clean it with carb cleaner. I thought about how to clean it lol

 

im having the same problem. So this means i have a head gasket leak?

 

It's definitely one of the tell tale signs. If you've also got excessive smoke coming out of the tailpipe and/or occasional overheating when idling, then it's all but certain. Also check your oil and see if it looks milky. A proper leakdown test will tell you for sure, though.

 

Around how much did you spend to get the leak fixed? I dont have any overheating when idling.

 

Since I changed the gasket(s) myself I just went to O'Reilly or Autozone or whatever and grabbed a Fel-Pro headgasket set for about $125, iirc. It has all the various gaskets you need when changing out the head gasket and even a few you don't (like a 16 pack of valve stem seals and an exhaust flange gasket I never ended up using). You could probably get a head gasket set off rockauto.com like this one for a whole lot cheaper, but I needed this stuff done like yesterday. A local machine shop charged $45 to resurface the head, which I thought was a pretty good deal. I opted to reuse the head bolts, but you really shouldn't do that. I needed the job to get done quickly and money was simply too tight at the time to spend another $60 bucks on new head bolts from Honda.

I'd say, if you do it yourself and do it right, you could do the whole thing for less than $200. If you take it to a shop, it'll get rather pricey since it's a somewhat time consuming job. I've heard of some shops charging $1000 and up for it on a Honda!

 

Yea that what ive been told. it could get really pricey and stuff. I just been looking around for a place with a good price.