Joined: Jan 2018

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From: Va

Hello all, first time poster here. Just picked up a 2001 civic lx 5 speed for dirt cheap. Problem was it was idling very rough but would clear up when driving. When I took it home I pulled the codes in it it and showed it had a misfire on cylinders 3&4 and it had a code related to the iac valve. Upon inspection the idle air control valve looks brand new and was unplugged. Plugged it back in and ran a little better but still had a misfire on the cylinders 3&4. I pulled the plugs and they are brand new as well, but cylinder 4 plug had an oversized spark plug in it. So I swapped coils 3&4 with coils from 1&2. And the misfire stayed on 3&4. I couldn’t run a compression check on #4 because of the hole was too big but cylinder 3 had 135 pounds of compression. However when I checked cylinder 2 it came up with only 35 pounds of compression and when I checked cylinder 1 it had absolutely 0 pounds of compression. I added oil to cyl 1&2 and the compression didn’t rise at all. Now, the car doesn’t appear to leak antifreeze but it is losing it and there appears to be oil in the radiator. It does not blow white smoke from the exhaust and there in no coolant in the oil when I checked the dipstick. So any ideas what it could be? It almost seems like a bad head gasket but the fact that cylinders 1&2 are almost completely dead and cylinder 3 has decent compression but still has a misfire has me a little stumped. I’m still not sure how the front 2 cylinders are almost completely washed out but do not misfire but the back 2 do misfire. He car has 281k miles but is in awesome shape otherwise so I would not be opposed to putting a used engine in but if I could salvage the current one and save a little money, I would much rather go that route. So any ideas? Look forward to hearing from everyone.

Joined: Dec 2008

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Joined: Jan 2018

Posts: 3

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From: Va

Figured it out. Was looking at the harmonic balancer and noticed a wobble, went to remove harmonic balancer and the bolt head broke off in the crank shaft! Was able to weld a nut to what was left to the bolt and remove it. Upon further inspection the crankshaft was actually bent and caused the timing belt to jump some teeth. Is this a common problem with these engines? In all my years of automotive experience I’ve only ever seen this once and it was on a Kia sorrento. I’m not even going to attempt to save this thing, time to swap in a long block swap.

Joined: Dec 2008

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Joined: Jan 2018

Posts: 3

Likes: 0

From: Va

Looking into the crank where the bolt goes you can see it is slightly bent, bolt will not go all the way in either. Goes in about half way and then stops, turning the engine by hand with the plugs out you can see the snout is bent

Joined: Dec 2008

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