Hello there boys and girls. I have a Stock 2000 Honda Civic EX with 192,000 Miles on it. Recently i have had coolant spewing out of the coolant overflow tank. Last time that happened my head gasket had dumped itself.

I've noticed when the car is running that there is bubbling in the overflow tank which makes me think that that the exhaust fumes are being pushed into the cooling system. I had the head resurfaced and replaced the head gasket (Fel Pro MLS Gasket) at 170k, did the timing belt, water pump, and belts at 180k and replaced the Radiator and cap because of a leak where the plastic meets the metal part of the cooling fins.

I did the work myself and followed the Service Manual when it came to Torquing the Head and properly purged the air out of the cooling system. trying to figure out if they head gasket failed and why would a failure occur again after 20k miles.

I recently figured this out because when i was idling for about 10 mins while being on a phone call i started to see the temp needle move from the typical middle spot go up about 1mm, i immediately shut off the car and checked to see if any coolant had leaked in which i saw coolant splatters from the side the overflow tank and coolant drops near the cap of the overflow tank.

As of now since i refilled the coolant the car has not overheated but coolant does seem to be disappearing with out any leaks other than the overflow tank cap area.

 

Personally I'll never use anything but OEM for the HG. The HG on my reman. motor went at 10k miles. The Fel Pro gasket I replaced it with went about 60k miles later. The hilarious thing is that the OEM HG is cheaper than all the other brands.

Any other symptoms? If you have a steady usage of coolant without leaks that's usually a HG, and combine that with the other problems and you can be pretty sure it's the HG again. Personally I would take the head off and have it checked by a shop and resurfaced if necessary. This time use an OEM gasket, and use new head bolts. Those bolts also need to be re-torqued after so many miles I believe. Should tell you in the FSM.

 

Another detail, how old is your torque wrench that you used for the head bolts?

Personally for the super sensitive parts of a motor (crank bearings and caps, head bolts, and cam bolts and caps), I like to either buy a new certified torque wrench for the job, break it in and use it, or I get my torque wrench tested at our local snap on truck. He's got a wrench tester to see if you are still in spec. still have to send it in to calibrate it but at least you can find out if you need to or not.

I would suspect your torque wrench is out of calibration and you under or over torqued your head.

 

@cbaber did you end up going with the OEM HG after all that hell? if yes how many miles have you put on it? I did purchase new head bolts from Honda when i did my HG i also oiled up the threads on the bolts. Sounds like I'm gonna have to go at it again with this head gasket business. I guess you live and you learn from not using OEM.

as far as any funky business just today did i notice that the engine seems like its choking when it starts for like 10 seconds and then smooths itself out like there are big gaps of air in the cooling system. I haven't burped the system in the past couple days since i filled it up with coolant and performed the proper procedure of getting the air out.

@TomCat39 Not gonna lie i used a brand new out of the box Harbor Freight Torque wrench when i was torquing it. since it looks like ill be doing this again i will invest in a proper torque wrench. i didn't know that torque wrenches needed adjusting to be honest. the more you know i guess.

Thanks for your input guys

 

Yes OEM since the 2nd HG and it's been fine. There are plenty of people that do fine with other brands but for more consistent quality I'll stick with OEM. I found a lot of examples where OEM was the answer in the research I did after that 2nd HG.

What's happening with your engine is that the HG is allowing coolant into the cylinders while the car is off. It pools up. When you go to start it, it can't fire because of the coolant. It takes a few seconds to burn it out of the cylinder. You may or may not see smoke from this. My car had the same issue each time. I never saw smoke, never saw any leaks, but at each startup it would stumble for 2-10 seconds. It gets progressively worse. 100% the HG with all these symptoms.

Might be worth getting a precision straight edge to check the head and block surfaces yourself.

 

you said was just sitting there idling when this happened, have you checked the fan output, does the fan come on?

 

I've not seen Harbor Freights Torque Wrenches but I have heard not so good things about them.

Straight out of the box, do they have a certificate of calibration or any documentation with them that say it's +/- 4% from factory?

The other key thing all my torque wrenches have said is to click it on low settings a bunch of times to spread the special lubricant around before using after storage for a long time. So from the package I use my lug nuts and click it on low settings both forward and backwards 5 or 6 times, then raise the torque up about 10-20 foot pounds, do it again 5 or 6 times and maybe raise it another 10 or so and do one more round of clicks. After that I feel it's safe to put to use. For inch pounds I raise it 12-24 inch pounds each time 2 or 3 times.

And yeah, some shops get their torque wrenches calibrated every 3 months, depending on use.