Where do I begin this dreadful tale of woe........

2000 Civic EX coupe, D16Y8, 210K Miles

Car started throwing misfires and running like poo just in general. Classic head signs... sludge in the coolant, cylinder misfires and running hot, blah blah. So I get a rebuilt head and gasket set.

I set about to replace the head and gaskets. Thanks to everyone for walkthrus and pictures on this site, it was a big help. List of what got fixed/replaced:

-Complete rebuilt head swap
-Head, exhaust, intake, TB, orings, injector seals, misc gaskets up top
-New distributor cap and rotor
-New plug wires
-New NGK plugs
-Cleaned intake, TB and IAV

Mechanic has taken a look for me and also mentioned the oil pan gasket needed to be replaced, so I did that as well. cleaned all surfaces, everything went back on per spec. Torqued and cleaned.

Start her up and she is purring like a kitten. Nice smooth idle, no misfires. I'm feeling pretty good about my adventure into D series land... Until I notice a nice steady stream coming down from behind the pulley. When it was off, it was a seep, but when the car was idling, it was running down.

Did some forum investigation and found that it was probably the front main seal, and possibly the oil pump o-ring. A little disappointing, but lets get to work.

Pull the valve cover, exhaust, oil pan, accessory belts, pulley (6' pipe helps), timing belt and finally the oil pump. Follow walkthru on here and in Honda service manual. Cleaned all surfaces, new o-ring, new pickup gasket, grey hondabond smoothed out and get some coming out the edges, torque to spec. Clean oil pan, another new gasket, toque everything back up. New front main seal, attach covers, belts, add oil and now here I am

So after replacing oil pump o-ring, grey hondabond the oil pump, new front main seal...... the blasted thing STILL leaks! After I refilled the engine with oil, I noticed it dripping down the side of the oil pan (I did turn the engine 4 times with a wrench to prime), under the weep hole of the lower timing cover. Start the engine and it begins to pour out.

Am I missing something here? Bad oil pump, bad front seal, need a redi-sleeve, bad oil pan gasket? I am guessing it is the oil pump since the pressure makes it worse. Thanks to anyone with some experience.

 

What you can do is to yank your pulley off so you can remove the outside lower timing belt cover. Put your pulley back on, and the motor mount if you removed it, fire her back up and you can see exactly where the oil is gushing.

Basically you want it fully assembled but without the front bottom timing belt cover so you can see everything.

When you had the oil pump off, you didn't notice any cracks or unusual holes, missing bolts etc etc?

 

I will definitely give that a shot. I've got it torn back down to the pulley, so I'll pull the lower cover off and see if I can pinpoint the leak. Sadly, in the 102F weather, I didn't give the pump more than a good wipe down. In the expectation of it being an oil pump, I went ahead and ordered one today. Should be in early next week. I am guessing that the inner plate isn't sealing or there is a crack and/or warp in the oil pump. Thanks for the help!

 

Its probably the crank seal that you didn't replace, might as well hit up the rear main seal as well since it has this many miles. God knows when it was replaced.

 

Tony, is there another seal behind the oil pump on the crank? I did replace the crank seal that sits in the oil pump and against the cup washer.

 

Yes an o-ring:

 

OK, thought maybe there was another. I did replace the o-ring and the pickup tube gasket. cleaned all mating surfaces, and grey hondabonded the surface per Honda Service instructions. Got a good seal with some grey pressed out all the way around. Once the sun gets a little lower in the sky, I'm going to pull the lower cover and take a look with it running.

 

What do you expect from a Honda Sieve-ic?..lol

 

NO way.....god dammit. Well I did attempt to replace all the seals. Since my car isn't leaking I should be fine.

 

However that oil ring isn't on the crank, I believe it seals up the pump to the block oil channel.

 

Yep, O-Ring for the high-pressure into the block, paper gasket on pickup tube and then grey permatex/hondabond between block and pump. New pump set to deliver today, storms rolled thru yesterday so I didn't get to finish the tear down... maybe today. If I don't get beyond frustrated, I'll try to take a video of the leak for reference.

 

 

I'll try to get the video up, but it's not good. Oil coming from behind the inner head timing cover...... so either the cam seal is leaking, the new head and/or head gasket is bad or the whole thing just needs to be set on fire. Not what I wanted to find. On the bright side, the oil pump seems to be OK :-/

 

It's quite likely the cam seal and that one is pretty easy to replace and is cheap.

You need a cam holder to get the bolt off after you take your timing belt off.

You don't have to undo the rocker assembly, you just need to get the cam gear off so you can take the back side upper timing cover off.

After that, sounds like you should be good to go.

 

those cam seals are really easy to pinch/mess up, especially aftermarket.

 

Thanks for helping me slow down and look. Pulled all covers off, found leak coming from the head, pulled cam gear and found the problem.....



Amazing how much oil comes out of the cam when there is NO seal. (Facepalm)

Head came "pre assembled and ready to install". In everything I have done to this car, all the measurements, hours cleaning mating surfaces and care I took to do everything right.... I never even looked! Needless to say, she is dry and running fantastic.

 

lol! glad to see it was something simple.

 

Awesome, glad it was the easy fix of just slamming a cam seal in there.