I have a 1998 honda civic ex 1.6 sohc. and i recently changed the head gasket.. its a grayish white smoke.. and i did everything to make sure it wouldnt smoke... i took the head to a shop and they checked it out and told me it was good. (they also cleaned the gasket surface) so no problems there... i checked everything over.. went to torque specs.. got all of that done to spec and seq. And ive ran out of ideas on what it could be.... its still smoking.. and now its doing this idle thing.. it will idle high (3k rpm) then it will stark doing this missing idle.. till i gas it up.... do i need to do timing? valve adjustments? i know about the cat problem but i drove the car around my town (30 miles) and it wont stop smoking .. i also put down cardboard under the exhaust tip.... and it looks like its shooting out condensation with black stuff also... soo maybe i need to drive it more? help me please x.x

 

Maybe the block surface was uneven.

 

so basically this renders my engine useless?

 

Backstory please. Was the car overheated often?

 

as far as i know.. the car was over heated once (and from what i was told it wasnt off the temp gauge it was still around the middle) ... then the guy never drove it again because he was afraid the car was going to die... so he bought a new civic and wanted to sell this one.. so i bought it.. and it had oil in the radiator (not a lot just about a cap full of oil for the whole radiator... which i flushed it and drove it.. ) then it did some idle **** where i had to swap out a bunch of sensors and had to change the temp gauge a bunch of bs... but thats all i know about it.. i drove then this from the guys house to mine and it ran fine.. till i stopped then the thing would idle low .. but i fixed that . and now it idles high... and smokes.. and misfires .. and id rather not have to put a new engine in this thing..

 

Compression test it.

 

Maybe bad spark plug seal, or valve seal.. or bent valve?

 

i have to do the compression test but i know the spark plugs and the spark plug seals are all new ..