Hey, while running at the track last night I went to shift into 4th at the end of the track but much to my dismay it was 2nd gear. Dont know how it happened but well it did. The car imediatly died and the lights ont he dash turned on. I started it back up but once i let off the gas it died again. The car is a 2001 prelude base model.

The car is hard to start up, occasional gas has to be given to get it to go. It idles funky and once you give it gas and let off the car will die.

It sounds like the obvious mis **** = bent valves scenario but here is what doesnt make sense...

The compression test read soemthing like 190 175 150 155... the numbers seem to be low but not extremely low like 55 or 78 like i have seen, right...

So next I took the car to a mechanic and he performed the leakdown test... His answer, was there was no valve leakage at all. he said his scope didnt pick up a hint of any sound in the intake or exhaust...???

He did the wet test and said the numbers went up slightly in 2 of the cylinders. He said my rings are bad but nothing is wrong in my head. He said the bad idle is because of the idle motors.


Could he possibly have done the leakdownt test wrong or something? The car was mis-shifted, it idles very badly, once its reved up it will die. LIke if you take off in the car and shift to 2nd give it gas it will be fine but once you come to a stop it dies...

Plus there is a notably louder ticking sound from my engine, especially when its about to die.. sounds like its struggling really bad. unless its just my hears playing games on me.

but what else could it be.. could the misshift effect rings? or could the mechanic be wrong?

I checked my timing and it seemed to be fine but I wasnt postive.

anyone have any ideas????

 

also, say no valves were bent, could anything else in the head be damaged and cause this?

 

the loud ticking could be from your valves, do a valve adjustment and see if that stops the ticking...not sure about the other stuff though

 

OOOOUUUCH!!! It's not called the mis-shift. It is called the MONEY-Shift.

How high did the car rev when you shifted into 2nd??

 

Just about guarantee some or all of the exhaust valves are toast. Pop the valve cover and get a feeler guage and see if some of the exhaust valves have abnormally large valve gaps.

 

Take off your valve cover & put cyl 1 @ TDC & tell me if the arrows on the camgears are still both pointing up & the hatch marks on the side of the camgears still line up. The hydraulic tensioner on the H22 doesnt hold the timing belt very tight & I bet that it could have slipped a tooth. If your cam timing is off your car wont like to idle

Edit: I bet $$$ that you didnt bend any valves.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SilverEk3dr &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Take off your valve cover & put cyl 1 @ TDC & tell me if the arrows on the camgears are still both pointing up & the hatch marks on the side of the camgears still line up. The hydraulic tensioner on the H22 doesnt hold the timing belt very tight & I bet that it could have slipped a tooth. If your cam timing is off your car wont like to idle </TD></TR></TABLE>

 

yup u might have gotten lucky. i've misshifted and broke my clutch, and had the hydrolic belt tensioner break on my motor and no bent valves after all of it.

 

I tried checking the timing and it seemed to be fine.. although i wasnt exactly sure. I cranked the pulley over with a 19mm to get the cam gears at tdc and the lines seemed to be almost lined up. i couldnt get them exactly lined up though. i checked the line on the flywheel too. it was late and i was tired and i wasnt exactly sure if it was right.

How noticable will it be if the timing belt jumped a tooth?

I guess i will try to take pictures and see what you guys can tell me

**EDIT** How do i know that its actually at TDC in number 1. Sorry but im not use to working on dohc h series... d series are so much easier haha

 

also, does anyone have a picture that could show me what it should should look like?

 

Usually, when its pretty bad, it'll jump 3-5 teeth so it'll be obvious if it has jumped that much. Do you have Stock cam gears, or something like Skunk2, I could get you a pic of the S2 gears lined up correctly at TDC. Here is one of the OEM gears lined up at TDC I believe, anyone correct me if I am wrong, I've had S2 gears since I got my swap.

Can't remember exactly, but when the oem cam gears are lined up like so, the engine is at TDC, if the marks on both sides of each cam gear dont line up with a ruler exactly all the way across, you may have jumped a tooth. Take a pic if possible and show us shots of the gears, valvetrain and such so that we can gain understanding of what happened when you "MONEY-shifted" lol.

 

i really hope ur not mocking me. you have pretty much the same name as i do. u did exactly what i did. i bent all my exhaust valves and broke 3 guides. loosen the rest of the guides too. i really hope ur not mocking me, cus its not funny. i got a skunk2 valvetrain though, my car did exactly what your car is doing now. i took out my sparkin plugs and clean them off. it idled funny and wen i revv'ed it, it would go back down and die, just like yours does. you bent valves

 

also, i had
like 90, 120, 175, and 100 compression.

 

my bud did 5 to 2 once bent a valve your luckey it did not happen

 

It is a 99.9 percent chance that you bent the valves My car did the same ****. I also did a compresion check, # came up like 150-150-150-150ish all the way through so I thought the rings were tost but when the head came off you could tell that 3 of the valves were bent. My car still ran but really bad and most of the time I had to keep my foot on th3 gas to keep the car on.

 

Alright cool thanks guys. Im pretty sure the timing is right on... so its gotta be a valve...

but what im wondering is how come when the mechanic did the leakdown could he have done it wrong... i was kind of suspesious because he didnt give me any flow numbers or anything. he just said they werent leaking.

is it possible to crack a guide and not bend a valve?

h22poweredgsr, nope i promise im not mocking you, plus i had no one had like this . actlually its kind of feaky about the name and that the same thing happened to you

 

do a valve adjustment and see if any f the valves are to far off from spec., thatll help you figure out if you bent any valves

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by speedracer9k &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">do a valve adjustment and see if any f the valves are to far off from spec., thatll help you figure out if you bent any valves</TD></TR></TABLE>

Specs are:
-Intake 0.006-0.007
-Exhaust 0.007-0.008
If they are higher than 0.014 then I would be worried

 

dont bother adjusting, you bent all the exhaust valves.