Ok,

My sister has been driving my prelude for a month now. i never noticed anything wrong but did notice a really small leak before. before she left for st. louis i filled the motor up to normal oil level. the drive was 4 1/2 hrs. when she arrived at st louis, it was leaking bad!! i never changed the pcv valve and really regret it!! what a dumbass...the thing is i drove to st louis 2 times there and back and no problem. she took it to firestone and they told her that the pcv valve was clogged and the pressure built up and blew the timing cover gasket. they also mentioned that i would need to change the timing belt tensioners and belt itself. They said that the worst it can cost is 1230$!! Anyways, i've searched around for common occurances and no luck. need your help guys! also, anybody living at st louis and know a good shop to fix my car at?? the car is close to washington university. i wouldn't mind a cheap shop but they have to be reliable. anyhelp would be awesome!! it has 93k miles. i/e/new wirings and plugs.


Modified by frog1623 at 7:58 AM 1/28/2004


Modified by frog1623 at 4:26 PM 1/30/2004

 

Sorry can't help you with a shop... but that sound very high. I would say closer to $800 max. Try calling places just to see what they would charge because I wouldn't pay $1200 for that amount of work.
Or do the work yourself

 

i do everything myself. the only problem is that Im 6hrs away!! so pretty much no matter what im screwed. even if i can get to st louis, i don't have a garage and all the tools to do everything. AND it's COLD AS SH#$!! im in need of a good shop to take the car to.

 

Can you get the car transported back ?

If you can do the job yourself it probably would come out cheaper still ... maybe find somebody with a truck and rent a u-haul trailer

 

umm... i don't have anything to haul it back. and it would take a whole lot of time because i go to school in MS and my sis is at st louis. My parents' home is in memphis. it would be a really big hassle. it will be a lot cheaper but i don't think i can finish everything in one weekend. if i don't finish, i would have to drive back to school, and then come back the next weekend to finish. its a 2 1/2 hour drive from my school to memphis.

 

bump

 

If the timing belt cover came off that isn't the end of the world...why do they think the timing belt needs to be done?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by satan_srv &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">If the timing belt cover came off that isn't the end of the world...why do they think the timing belt needs to be done?</TD></TR></TABLE>


cuz they are prolly trying to scam her like a lot of shops do nowadays, sad isnt it.

Get her to take some pictures

 

yes, I was thinking the same thing. I HATE firestone because everytime I bring my car there they always mention something way off subject. I have a lifted pathfinder also and they always gave me a hard time when I bring it there. Last time they claimed my frame was bent but I found the problem to be, UCA bolts needed to be tightened. I NEVER go there after those 2 incidents and unfortunately my sis brought it there in St Louis. They claimed that the timing cover gasket needed to be replaced and a bunch of other stuff. I don't have the complete list but I will post what they said when I get it.

 

If they told you the timing cover gasket needed to be replaced I would get the car out of there ASAP That little rubber gasket around the plastic timing cover isn't going to harm anything.

The reason that they want to change the timing belt is because when they get oil soaked their lifespan is significantly reduced. The reason they want to replace the tensioners is because they are morons. A little oil on a tensioner won't hurt it.

I don't know how much it will be to replace the pcv valve as I don't know where it is on that car.

The only thing I can think of is that maybe you misunderstood them and they want to replace the valve cover gasket? If that blew out it would cause a pretty significant leak.


What you could do is take it to a real shop and have them fix the valve cover leak and change the pcv valve. Also have them recheck what Firestone touched. And if you can, have a guy take the car in. It is just too easy to rip a chick off.

 

****Your PCV Valve is located on the back-center portion of your valve cover. It's shaped at a 90 degree angle and is about 3/4" to an 1". There will be a feed line running into the back portion of the valve.****

I have a 4th gen. non-VT. This is where it's located.

Here are some pics of what it should look like. These are pics from a CRV/LS VT Conversion on a b20 Vtec block. The diagrams on the location of the PCV valve vary from VT to non VT. I presume that the H series motor has the similar oil routing points.







Any u guys want to comment on the location of the 4g. vt pvc valve?

 

Ok,
The thing is that I doubled check to make sure they were telling me the correct items that needed to be replaced and they claimed that I needed to get a timing cover gasket set. I've never heard of that but I also never messed with those gaskets yet. But good news! My sis knows a guy that owns a 5th gen lude and he recommended a shop. They said that it would probably cost UNDER 500$ to FIX! Pretty much the moral to this Topic is DONT EVER GO TO FIRESTONE. Bunch of bastards. Oh yea, I have a black widow kit(which i regret getting) that needed to be taken off so they can put the car on a lift. Firestone was going to charge me 150$ to do that!! it's only 3 bolts holding the front up!!! the sideskirts each have about 5. the other shop FREE.


Modified by frog1623 at 7:55 PM 1/31/2004

 

Glad to hear that you got it taken care of.

Many shops love to take advantage of women because they know next to nothing about cars and it is so easy to do. A friend had his wife take his Sentra to a supposedly reputable mechanic because of a no start condition. They replaced the starter for $300. Three days later it had the same problem. They claimed it needed $1500 of work to rewire and replace some stuff. My friend goes down there and tears them a new one and gets his $300 back. Then he took it to my old boss. He fixed it for $45(minimum charge). Turned out to be a faulty connection. Took 5 minutes to solder in a new spade terminal.

 

If your PCV valve clogged and you were leaking crazy oil, then you more than likely blew a seal out, like your balancer shaft seal. If so, you just need to pull off the timing belt cover, pull that block side thing off and replace the seal, reinstall that block side thing, clean everything up really good w/ some degreaser, replace the timing belt and reinstall everything. MUCH cheaper than what Firestone told you.

 

would a bad pcv valve cause oil to leak (rapidly and in excessive amounts) of oil from the oil dipstick?

we did a mini-me with a d16y7 block and a d16z6 head and at the same time we replaced the PCV and this is our current problem...

whatcha think? we're STUCK until we can get this resolved and we gave up for the night never considering the new PCV valve to be bad... i just thought of it and want to know if it's the possible culprit...

thanks guys/gals...

-Erik

 

also, LudyKrus mentioned it's possible other seals could have been effected with frog's problem...

do you think we risk having any blown out seals? the oil is only coming from the dipstick....

-Erik

 

Possibly; first things first, check to make sure the oil is coming from around the dipstick. If it is, then it is possible the pressure built up enough to cause the oil to leak from there.

 

yeah the oil is definatly coming from the base of the oil dipstick "tube"

the oil dipstick fits EXTREMELY tight... like, so tight you almost need pliers to take it out and reinstall it....

i'm assuming if the dipstick fitment wasn't so tight the dipstick would have been blown out and the oil would have escaped via the top of the tube....

i guess it was just easier for the oil to escape past the one o-ring at the base of the tube....

I'm reading about the PCV system and it seems that it's very possible a bad pcv valve would cause so much crankcase pressure that this could happen but until we put the old one bac in tomorrow, we won't know.... it was replaced as preventative maintenance so the old one is still good....

Regards,

Erik

 

great news . They said it was a seal close to the oil filter? im not really sure what he said. my phone was breaking up. anyways, he recommended a full tune up which included all the belts ,fluids, and seals changed. makes sure all the timiing is correct ,new water pump, etc. I really didn't want to the whole tune up but my sister insisted and she said she was going to pay for the whole thing heck yea! anyways, it would cost total of 1100 for everything. as long as i don't have to pay for it, thats great news for me since im struggling to get my new project started!