I noticed oil in my civics antifreeze container, so I took it out, drained it and washed it out, then proceeded to refill it 2 days ago. Yesterday I checked it and it was empty but there was oil smeared in it. Then today I checked it again and now its antifreeze to the rim with oil in it, any ideas??

 

Possibly headgasket

 

More then likely it's a blown headgasket.

 

Wouldnt suprise me, hear the d17 is known for headgasket failure

Just waiting for mine to go too

 

Yeah, they're fairly common on the D17, sadly.

 

I brought it to a shop after work this morning for an oil change, but they don't do head gasket type checks . The car runs fine, no overheating, normal colored oil, no burning smell, no exhaust smoke.. The engine/tranmission is extremely oily/greasy and I noticed that there is quite a bit all around one of the hoses(The Bottom Hose) that goes to the radiator. Could that be a possibility of the grease getting through the hose? or should I just go to a shop that deals with head gaskets?

Thank you guys for the input

 

Id say go to a shop that can check headgaskets, just to be sure

They can probably find out where its coming from

 

You can easily test the headgasket yourself in a few ways:

1) Take the overflow hose, place it in the overflow tank, and rev the engine. If you get bubbles in the overflow tank, you can be fairly sure it's the headgasket.

2) You can rent a "engine block tester" kit from AutoZone. You open the radiator cap, remove enough coolant to lower the coolant level about 1"-1.5", then you put the tool (it is a "sniffer") over the hole where the radiator cap goes. The block tester liquid is inside of the tester at this point, and you pull air through the tester as you run the engine. If the liquid in the tester changes colors, then you have combustion gases in your cooling system (indicating head gasket).

I'm sure my #2 doesn't make the most sense, so Google a video of "using a block tester" or something similar, and you will see.

Report your findings back!

Edit: here you go: (Looks like he uses the overflow tank opening to "sniff" the system. I guess this would work the same?

 

Thank you very much! I'll run those test this weekend as soon as I get my car back and post an update!

 

I don't believe i have this issue at the moment, but i am wondering what is the normal way of checking levels on overflow tank on a EM2. Also what milage do Civics usually blow head gaskets at?

about overflow tank/checking coolant levels, i ask because it seems like its built into the bottom of the car, am i supposed to go underneath the car just to check it? Most cars i have they always installed the overflow quite high up, this is rather new to me.


Simply from looking overhead i can't see anything :/

 

Don't worry, it's fun





My headgasket blew at about 273500km / 170000ml.

 

I'm over 200k already, so part of me is honestly wondering if the car has already had its head-gasket replaced as usually they don't seem to last this long.

Between that and the fact i have driven it hard on closed courses a bit I'm simply going to hope that is true, in retrospect its probably something i should of asked the previous owner, but the EM2 i have was simply bought because it was a good economy car at the right price, while being one that isn't completely terrible for autocross but not really great either (especially while stock, and on 600 treadwear A/S tires)

Just as a reference, is there any tell-tail way to usually notice if its possible the head-gasket has been replaced before without removing the entire head unit?

 

Not that i know of, i recently found out the d17 i pulled from my civic with 150k blew a headgasket and snapped a rod.....now i suspect my replacement engine may have a bad headgasket also and its at 216k lol