Rebuilt D16A6. About 15K miles since the rebuild. White sweet smelling smoke when the engine gets to operating temp. Difficulty idling and overheats. Starter won't crank when it's hot. Coolant and oil look good. Starts when cold.

Pulled the head; gasket and combustion chambers looked fine. I'm taking the head to the machine shop to have it pressure tested for cracks and warpage. I can't imagine it being a cracked block.

Two questions:

- Can improperly torqued head bolts allow coolant into the cylinders? I noticed that some of the bolts were much easier than others to unscrew.

- There was a lot of build-up under the head gasket, where it mates to the cooling jackets, on the exhaust side. See photo.

What is that stuff and is it normal? What could be causing it?

 

"White sweet smelling smoke" is from antifreeze passing out the exhaust, so at minimum: the head-to-block seal has failed. Aka: blown head gasket.

Who is guilty of "rebuilding" it?

Re the 2 questions:
1) Yes. Somebody blew the standard torque-plus-angle head torquing procedure.
2) The pic sucks, so could you tell us what color is "the build-up under the head gasket"? Regardless, it's there because the block wasn't hot-tanked before "rebuilding", or else the cooling system was never flushed.