|
If the engine in that Honda is in the D17 family, they are well known to pop the head gasket between a combustion chamber and the water jacket. I had one that went at about 90k on a gently driven, dealer maintained car. I don't know if it's a design defect, or just a bad batch of gaskets, but I've not heard of one failing twice on the same car. I decided to avoid OEM in this case, and went with the full Mahle kit. Of which, the head gasket was marked made in Japan (unsure if that's good or bad in this case). The job is pretty easy. If you can avoid disconnecting the positive lead from the alternator (as some mechanics suggest), do it that way. I thought that was lazy, and disconnected the alternator, only to break the terminal post. I spent probably as much time fixing that mistake, than I spent on the entire rest of the job. I don't have a fancy radiator funnel, so I filled the system with the front of the car on ramps, and it burped just fine. Oh, and best of all, my head wasn't warped, so I didn't have to surface it.
Another lesson I learned the hard way: if you're going to do the timing belt at the same time, remove the CPS without disconnecting the harness. I don't know why, but they tend to fail shortly after that. Mine did, and the car went into limp mode, and wouldn't rev past 2k. Got me home, though.
Go out now and douse the exhaust studs in PB blaster, and have fun :-).
|
