By Adrian (Civicguru) (203.42.97.227) on Saturday, April 21, 2001 - 12:37 am:

Well, I seem to have managed to blow up another engine .
I finally decided to have a run in the car at the Honda Club's National Meet last weekend. At the end of the motorkhana (somewhat similar to an autocross) there was steam coming out of the engine oil catch tank ... not a good sign. The top radiator hose was squishy so off with the radiator cap. Not a drop in it. Off with the oil cap and sure enough its underside looks like it's covered with cottage cheese. There was also some water boiling down near the valves. Great, looks like another blown head gasket! I start filling the radiator, and filling and filling. Eventually stick the hose in and keep filling, still won't get full, no water is coming out the outside so off with the oil cap again. It's not a good sign when you see the water level rising in the rocker cover ... .
Pulled the head off today. I bet none of you can guess what actually happened (BTW it's not the head gasket which showed absolutely no signs of leakage.)

By theonlylivinggod (65.0.25.235) on Saturday, April 21, 2001 - 02:04 pm:

My hunch is you cracked the block...the question is where and how?
My friend Ken says if you have an engine oil cooler attached to your cooling system, that's the culprit.
Meanwhile, back at the truth...

By Adrian (Civicguru) (203.42.97.227) on Saturday, April 21, 2001 - 07:29 pm:

You can get oil to water coolers, but I suspect Ken is thinking of the hondamatic oil cooler in the bottom of the radiator. If that cracked you'd get water in the gearbox (I certainly don't have a hondamatic in this car!)
You seem to be new around here so I'll take a guess that you haven't seen my car yet hccnsw.webpub.net/membership/members/138.

You don't get the answer till I see at least three interesting guesses .

By theonlylivinggod (65.0.25.235) on Saturday, April 21, 2001 - 11:20 pm:

Ken did mention automatics, but I kind of left that out. You're right, I'm "new" at least to the Gen.One Cult. Used to be a Porsche syncophant. Still have a '69 Buick Skylark Convertible - I mean, American Muscle IS performance. Straight ahead, anyway. But I never liked any of my cars as much as I like my '78 Civic...well maybe my '78 3.0 turbo (911 euro version). 0-60 in 4.3!!!
Thanks for the pix.

By Charles R. (64.170.157.147) on Sunday, April 22, 2001 - 12:45 am:

You didn't crack the bottom of the water jacket, did you?

By Don (209.181.52.69) on Sunday, April 22, 2001 - 12:46 am:

Since you already mentioned the head gasket was ok. I know a cracked head wouldn't raise this much commotion.

My theories are that with the bore at 74 mm you split a sleeve, or that one of the core plugs underneath the cam gave out.

So did I get it right???

By Adrian (Civicguru) (203.42.97.227) on Sunday, April 22, 2001 - 02:32 am:

Some reasonable guesses, but not quite...

OK, here's how my thinking went:
1. Bugger, another blown head gasket. Still driveable, just a pain.
2. Water bubbling away in the rocker cover isn't good, must be a really bad gasket failure, maybe not drivable.
3. Rocker cover filling up with water when filling the radiator is NOT a good thing, must be REALLY bad.
4. Considering the flow rate into the engine, the hole must be at least the equivalent of something you can stick your finger through ... bloody hell, not another engine!
5. So what could it be? The most obvious answer is a slit bore, but there was no steam out the exhaust like you'd get with lots of water in the combustion chamber and it still ran quite smoothly.

So the answer? One of those bloody mythical 20 cent parts (you know, the ones that race commentators talk about when a car fails two laps from the end of a long race " ... some little 20 cent part broke, ending their race ... ").
As most of you should know the rocker shafts are held into the pillars at the ends by small pins (bloody difficult things to get out when you want to pull it apart). Sometime in the past someone had tapped out the holes (wasn't me) and put grub screws into them (makes it a lot easier to pull apart that's for sure). Anyway, I guess I forgot to put locktite on one of them and the damn thing worked itself loose. It wouldn't have been a problem if it had just dropped down a hole and into the sump, but no, it landed under the cam. When the cam lobes are down (i.e. closest to the head, they are closer than the thickness of these grub screws. So, under the inlet lobe for number 4 is a 15mm diameter hole where the cam punched the screw through the top of the head and into the water jacket.

It certainly wasn't what I was expecting!!!

I was kind of dreading finding a split bore and having to build another engine (again!), but looking at it I think it can be welded up, so all I should be up for is the welding, a light skim of the head and a head gasket ... whew !!!

By Anthony (210.50.30.4) on Sunday, April 22, 2001 - 04:26 am:

Bad luck Son.You were supposed to be Smiling last week-end at Oran not Dejected as you were.Once again Sorry to hear the bad Luck.

By Charles R. (64.170.157.212) on Sunday, April 22, 2001 - 10:47 am:

You're right, never would guess that one.
It falls under the category: Freak Accident.

And here we were trying to think of something reasonable, go figure.

By theonlylivinggod (65.0.25.235) on Sunday, April 22, 2001 - 01:09 pm:

The good news is that it was only a 20 cent part.

By Adrian (Civicguru) (203.42.97.227) on Sunday, April 22, 2001 - 04:36 pm:

Yeah, but probably a $200 fix ...

By Adrian (Civicguru) (203.42.97.227) on Monday, April 23, 2001 - 12:42 am:

Ok, well here it is. You can see the offending grub screw sitting beside the hole. You can also see a couple of marks on the plug next to the hole where it caught under a different lobe, but didn't do more than dig in a little. Luckily the screw was softer than the cam as the cam doesn't have a mark on it.

By Andrew Fatseas (61.12.0.102) on Monday, April 23, 2001 - 06:07 am:

Bought yerself a digital camera eh Adrian?

Nice hole by the way...

By ROotUS (203.34.130.137) on Wednesday, April 25, 2001 - 06:00 am:

did you sit your head on top of a pizza base when taking the photo?

By Adrian (Civicguru) (203.42.97.227) on Wednesday, April 25, 2001 - 04:37 pm:

Pizza base??? What the hell are you talking about?

Andrew: No, haven't got a digital camera yet, just happened to catch one with a couple of pictures left at the right time.

By ROotUS (203.34.130.156) on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 04:33 am:

it just looks like tomato paste or something through that hole. i dunno, i guess i see pizzas in the production too much (pizzaman)