So as the title says, yesterday when going to pick my girl up from work getting out of the freeway i saw that it was a lil warmer then usual then IT WAS ABOUT TO CLIMB and killed the engine, turned the key back to II so the fans can kick in and it started falling really quick, both fans were running i let the car cool and picked up my lady, it was cool enough and it was right around the corner from her work, so took it to my moms pad only a block away. completely let it cool down opened the radiator cap and no water is missing, it was full seemed strange so i let some of the coolant out and behold *rubber like substance* in the radiator i think we all know what that means. before i bought the car someone put some headgasket stop leak, so i go ahead and turn the car on and bam bubbles !!!GREAT!!! LOL so i put the fans on direct power made it home. so now im at a bill of $400 for radiator,cap, radiator hoses, thermostat, headgasket, intake manifold gasket and gasket valve cover will be doing it this weekend so honda-tech be ready my first time documenting something on here. ive already cleaned the egr ports took out my manifold to do this cleaned it very very very very damn good when i shined an led inside the egr valve port i can see all holes nice and clear hell yeah hahaha. THIS CUT INTO MY TURBO BUILD BIG TIME. LOOKS LIKE ILL BE WAITING EVEN LONGER

 

The joys of owning an older car, be thankful you can do the work yourself. BTW avoid replacing vital parts with cheap Napa brands like Spectra

 

hell no hahaha all oem from hondapartscheap i love oem

 

It is possible that your radiator is clogged but also it could be your thermostat is stucked close. I would flush the coolant and replaced the thermostat first. If it still runs hot, then replace the radiator and hoses. If your radiator is rusted or leaking, replace it. I don't think you need to replace head gasket unless you see oil leaks near the head gaskets.

 

no thermostat at that point, I replaced coolant, flushed head and block put thermostat in oem oem radiator and now she runs cooler, the old coolant i took out did look brownish and after i emptied it it had like rust settled at the bottom or scales very MINIMAL but i had the original radiator inspected and cleaned, it couldn't be saved it was far gone i will be going toward the end of this year going turbo with forged internals

 

i love older cars, progects. i can go buy a 5k car and i don't know what's been replaced and what has not, i bought this car for 650 working condition ALL OEM it even has the oem gas cap and i can dump 4-5k into this car full suspension, brakes, fluids, mounts, tune up, couple vital sensors, bushings, timing belt, water pump, radiator, thermostat, engine seals and now im set for a good as while

 

Well there's always carfax and asking for service records. Usually the car has been well maintained when the person has those instead of them rambling on about how a bunch of parts were replaced. Pretty easy to check these cars to see if they're good mechanically. For sure if it's still got a good body and relatively decent interior for it's age. Just comes down to if you're content with that car for years after sinking that much money into it.