Good evening everyone. I have a 94 Honda accord LX 2.2 non-vtec. It has 174K miles on it and I am having a issue that I can not figure out and everytime I get it to the shop that I work at the car wont act up for my boss to hear what it is doing. I will start this off with all the work we just recently done to it.
I just got done putting a remaned head on it, New head gasket, new intake gasket, new valve cover gasket, new exhaust manifold gasket. We didn't put a new timing belt on cause it was just done 15K ago. The reason we put a new head on and new head gasket because before we bought the car at one time or another in its life time it has been so hot that the inner upper timing cover was melted. My boss who is a Asian Tech said we needed to just get a reman head instead of taking the chance of the old one not being any good. There was signs of it passing water into Cylinders 2 & 3. 1&4 wasn't as bad but 1 was starting to get a little water. I got the car back on the road Christmas eve and have been driving it making sure everything is good until we just started a new problem. On Friday when the car was at operating tempature it would not start. You have to hold the gas to the floor to get it to start and stay running. Saturday when I was at a friends house I pulled the plugs and looked into the cylinders and noticed that Piston 2&3 was damp and Injector 2 was wet. Today I went to the shop and pulled the fuel rail and put the injectors in our sonic cleaner and cleaned them up. They did need a cleaning. I don't see how the car was running. I also put new plugs in while I was there to see if that would also help fix the issue. Now tonight I went to go to the store and the car didn't want to start and run again. So I lifted the hood once I got it running and noticed the smell of antifreeze coming from the exhaust manifold. Also while it was still in it stumbling mode I pulled wires 2&3 and there was no difference at first but once it got up and running at high idle and I hooked them back up there was a difference. I could tell I had a misfire on these two cylinders.
The question I have is it possible I still have a leak between these two cylinders cause of the head gasket not sealing or is there possibly something else happening. Like I said I only notice this problem when the engine is at operating temperature and its only does it if the car has been sitting a min of 5 mins. I can shut it off and start it right back up and its fine. But if it sets for about 5 mins or more it will do this. I will have to hold the gas to the floor to get it to start. Also it didn't do this until after I done all this work to it. The reason we done this work to it is because it would keep over heating. I have installed a new thermostat and new radiator about 2-3 months prior to doing this. Also we do have a ck engine light occiiasly which is saying its the EGR Lift valve. All I know is its a Code 12 and that's what I have seen to find on what it is. Any diagnoses I can do to get this thing figured out will be helpful. It has me againist the wall and I cant figure it out.

 

You won't know if it's leaking until you test it. Do a compression test and make sure to remove the 15a ecu fuse in the engine fuse relay box before you test.