Hello everyone,

I'm new to this forum since I just purchased my first Honda, which is a 1996 Civic LX (4-door)...anyways, just replaced the thermostat and thermo switch since one of them was bad causing my car to overheat..and I went ahead and replaced the radiator car also. Well now it never overheats but when I turn my A/C on it puts tons of air into the radiator causing mainly air & eventually some fluid to travel through the tube going into the reservoir and then eventually leaking out the top of the reservoir via the tiny overflow holes that the reservoir cap covers. Any ideas to why so much air comes through when my A/C is turned on??...if so, what can I do to correct this?

 

you are putting a load on your motor. you likely have a blown headgasket if your car has been overheating. d series motors don't take very well to that. do a compression test.

 

Well the overheating issue was solved as soon as the thermostat and thermo switch was replaced....but if I remove the reservoir cap/hose while the car is running without the a/c on it's fine....as soon as I turn on the a/c air starts coming out of that hose. (and of course with the cap on/hose in the reservoir, it makes the fluid in the reservoir bubble...but not bubble due to heat of course, just air)....I thought if I had a bad head gasket, I would see bubbles in the radiator even with the a/c off??..is that not correct?

 

Still could be headgasket.
AC puts a big load on the motor. Try ac off and rev the car to around 4k and see if you get bubbles or jumping coolant.

(when you rev up that high the coolant should rise but no jump out or bubble).

 

If your fans are working properly and the t stat is as well and you are pushing coolant into the overflow, another vote for the HG.

 

lisle tool Part number 75500
check it out.. it will tell you if you have exhaust gases present in your coolant which confirms a faulty HG

 

when OP find out his Head gasket it blown

When OP replaces HG and notices it does not overheat anymore!

i had to.

 

Thanks for the help!...from doing a test drive last night w/o the A/C on...and also performing the test like you mentioned above, it's pretty much confirmed that I just bought a Civic with a blown head gasket!.... I have a copy of the service manual that gives a lot more step to remove the head versus this link: http://hondaswap.com/general-tech-ar...ts-pics-71528/

It's just the D16Y7 engine, so hopefully shouldn't be too bad....do you all think it's okay to just go by the steps in that link above?..or use the FSM?.... Also, do you think it's okay to just purchase the head gasket itself?...or should I purchase the more expensive entire kit that comes with all those other seals & gaskets?

 

kit. You will need everything thats in the kit.

 

You are going to need a lot of special tools (torque wrenches, pulley holder, etc.). Do you have them?
You may as well do the timing belt/water pump as well (jack stands).

 

Okay, thanks...just ordered this kit: http://www.1aauto.com/1A/EngineGaske...FUYaOgodT0wA7Q

..and I have a good bit of tools from all the other work I do on my Z... (I have a 1 Kobalt torque wrench & 2 jack stands...but I don't have a pulley holder...is it possible to do the head gasket replacement without it?....and yeah, I'd like try and do the timing belt and/or water pump as well if they're not in good shape...just not sure how funds are looking at the current moment.....so was that link that gave instructions to the head gasket replacement look okay to use instead of the FSM?

 

sleepyaccord96, at least he is taking the advice were giving him instead of dragging on a 6 page thread about it. Haha I am dying over here!

Yes, you can do a head gasket without pulling the timing belt off the crank.

 

As he just purchased the car from a "friend" I'd do the timing belt as well.

 

Well...just replaced the head gasket over the weekend...thought the issue was fixed...but then after running some errands, I smelled coolant....and sure enough it was coming out from the 2 tiny bleed out holes on the rim of the coolant reservoir...and when I removed the reservoir cap/hose, air was coming out of that hose. (even w/o the A/C on)...not sure how all this air pressure is getting into the radiator and causing the reservoir to fill up and eventually overflow coolant when the engine is hot and running.

 

you have a blown headgasket. not sure what else there is to explain.

 

also timing belt lock tool, you can look it in ebay

 

No one mentioned it but you could also have a warped head. No amount of headgasket replacing is going to fix that. That needs to be taken care of at a machine shop. Worse case scenario is you have a cracked block. You can do a test to see if exhaust gasses are getting into the coolant to make sure.

 

Did you ever bleed the cooling system? Also did you replace your radiator cap as well? If you did all those you may have what Marc explained above.

 

Yeah, since I replaced the head gasket I guess a warped head is probably the issue.... I used the combustion leak detector test again and the fluid did change to yellow from blue....so this sucks!

 

Swap time!!!!