B18C with many symptoms..bidda help please

ASSISTANCE Hybrids & Advanced Aftermarket Engine Performance
1

ok here goes:

teg = 92 GSR
motor - 98 B18C; HC valves, Stage II cams, dual springs, head milled 2X, 7.5lb flywheel, cosmetic head gasket…think thats it internally.

car has been burning coolant at an exceedingly increasing rate. after i get off the xpressway i get plumes of white smoke. no good.

car now idles at least 1500RPM, normally at 2100!!! this has been going on for about a month. earlier this month i took her upto the adirondacks. as you can imagine, it didnt go perfectly well. bottomed out at the top of a gravel hill, cracked the exhaust. huge leak. thought i was going to be forever stuck teeter tootering on top of the mound of earth and gravel…but alas, i was able to get over the hump. my heart was pounding though, i will admit to that.

it has been ever since that trip that the car idles so high. not only that, due to the lightened flywheel the thing used to rev quickly, now i gas it and its not too much slower on the increase in RPMs but on the way back down in RMP’s its slowwwwwwww and then just slwoly stops around 2500 and settles to 2100-1500 RPMS. what gives?!

i recently changed the spark plugs (2 weeks ago) and 2 injector o-ring (i also have a pretty terrible hissing sound which i thought was directly related to a leaky o-ring; i changed 2 of them and the sound still persists) the oil was also changed when i brought it out for the season (april). i do have to add oil on occasion as well as coolant, obviously.

also, there is oil in my coolant reservoir. which i can only assume = no good. i was on another honda board searching and they were talking specifically about Accords and how they have had a similar issue which ended up being…a pin hole in the block!? only fixable by replacing it…boy have i got my fingers crossed thats not my issue…

about a week ago i got a Code 9 (or 8? think it was 8; i have a perpetual code 23, so i keep a jumper in to know what my cars is telling me) i forget exacatly what it was, something wrong with #1 cyl in regards to the dizz-y. so i was going to replace the dizz-y. few days after it turned on though and before i ordered a new dizz-y, it went away. go figure?

when accelerating if i switch gears and end up BELOW roughly 2K RPM’s the car will BOGGGG whcih i think is a misfire…right? just boggs terribly, finally pushes through and i accelerate. if i switch into a gear and end up higher than 2K RPMs it will not bog and go smoothly through the gears.

also, at cruising speed, if i let my foot off the gas slightly the exhaust sounds like an AK47, !!!pat pat pat pat pat pat!!! hopefully some of you will know what im talking about here. im guessing that may be slightly due to the huge crack in my exhaust (whcih iam putting off replacing because i am prettyyy sure i had to have it custom bent…damn it all)

i guess thats it for now. ive neglected her for a while, just doing what i need to to get by; its all catching up to me now it would seem.

thanks for any and all help you guys can give me. certainly dont want to sell her…

~tRece

2

Things to look at:

The high idle and hissing sound seam to me like a big Vacuum leak. My guess is at the intake manifold gasket. Start the car, get a can of brake cleaner and start carefully spraying around where the intake manifold meets the head. Small pulses like a half second press on each runner, one at a time. If the car idles down or better yet stalls, you have found the location of at least one big leak.

The coolant burning and white smoke, and oil in the reservoir seam like a head gasket to me. This would also explain the low RPM bogging as the cylinder fills with coolant under vacuum. You can pull all four spark plugs and inspect them. If one plug is super clean, like steam cleaned, you’ll know which cylinder is burning the coolant. You can also use a bright focused beam flash light to look into each cylinder. The clean shiny piston is the one burning coolant.

Sounds like at the very least you need a head gasket. I’d check the head and block with a precision straight edge before I put another gasket on too. Good luck.

3

awesome ! thanks alot for the info man!

going to get some brake cleaner and try to find the leak.

and the head gasket is something im going to have to do once it comes off the road, but im in Upstate NY, so it wont be long now lol.

i had also found some threads where people just tightened down the bolts for the head and that seemed to solve their problem…i may give this a try. i have a torque wrench, but i have never touched the head or the block so this is all new territory for me; for watever reason im always nervous when messing with something that has certain lbs of torque to be set at. hell, even when i change my brakes i tighten and loosen the lugs wayyyy too much lol.

thanks again for the info - ill keep you updated as to my progress!!

tRece