Hello all,
ok so I need some help to comfirm my suspicions. My sons friend brought over his 98 Honda Prelude because he was getting a Check Engine light. I plugged up my OBD reader and it gave EGR malfunction and Cylinder 2 misfire with a random misfire.
I started checking it and found right away that he had a double gasket on the EGR valve (rookie mistake I guess, we've all done i'm sure). Fixed that and replaced with a new gasket-then found a cracked coil pack-replaced that right away thinking that would fix the problem. Cleared the codes and test drove it. EGR did not come back however the misfires did.
Here is what the car is doing:
-Starts and turns off immediatly
-Idles slightly high and low (feels like a small vacuum leak but not sure yet)
-Lacks power
-White Exhaust smoke (like running lean)
So i pulled plugs to check the condition-found the boots had liquid droplets (assuming coolant), inside #2 cylinder had some oil on the spark plug (ignition side).
Ok so I am assuming a bad head gasket...need confirmation though or a really bad vacuum leak (dont think so)-is there anything I might be missing???

 

white smoke from exhaust and fluid in or around the plugs is screaming a head gasket.


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Thanks man, thats what I was thinking......I appreciate the response

 

Best thing to do is compression test it.

 

Compression test won't tell you much unless the headgasket badly blown.

You need to perform a leak down test or go to the parts store and buy a block test kit. On the latter test, you have a tube with blue fluid in it which attached to the radiator full. Bring the car to operating temps. If the headmaster is blown, typically you will get a result of the blue fluid turning green or yellow. It turns this color because it detects exhaust gases in the coolant system. If the block test shows nothing, do a leakdown.

 

ya, a compression test wont tell ya much. I did one recently and my car passed. The overheating I was getting was the gasket. found out thru the white smoke and liquid on sparks.

 

When you compression test, you are specifically testing the cylinders for problems. If he's getting a misfire for a cylinder, that is narrowing the problem to the cylinders. There is no way he is going to pass a compression test if there is a head gasket leak at the cylinder. A leakdown test is just going to narrow it to either the gasket, the exhaust valve, or the intake valve, but it's a little bit more work.