On the way up north for SkinnyKid1 to buy a road sofa, his daily ('03 Civic) ate a head gasket. LOTS of stops for coolant I'm glad we had brought on the way up, and an increasingly larger number of stops on the way back, and we had to do something.
Up north - pushing coolant into and out the overflow? Maybe, just maybe it's a bad rad cap. Nope.
On the Coquihalla connector seeing what I think are bubbles in the coolant? Probably a head gasket. Grrr.
Pressure testing back home, I found a leak at the lower rad hose and the thermostat seal. Fix those. Still pushing coolant, with whispy, lingering smoke from the tailpipe. Ordered head gasket. And rings, because they're probably cooked. And rod bearings, because I'm never comfortable re-using them.
Friday 4:30 Kid gets home from work and we start pulling the head off and pistons out. Rod bearings are junk. D17A1 Crank is held in with a main girdle, center main bearing falls out by itself and is k.n.a.c.k.e.r.e.d. With a stop for dinner, we're done by around 8pm.
Saturday early I take a run down to LordCo - the only store of which in BC that has main bearings, and thankfully only in STD. After family pancake breakfast we're cleaning and prepping. Head is disassembled, very mild porting (we're in there; it'd be rude not to), valves are lapped, piston ring grooves are cleaned, and then lunch. We take the head to the only guy working at the only machine shop that is open and he's nice to us and mills the head two hours before closing.
Pistons are installed, head is reassembled with two coats of Permatex copper spray gasket sealer to make sure things seal, and the camshaft slips through my fingers, falls to the floor and breaks in three pieces.
Quick rush out to work where I have a disassembled D17 in a bin, and I grab another cam. Engine is back together and fires up around 9pm. Green flashing dot on the dash PRNDL is unhappy and I check codes- turns out we (I) broke the TCC Solenoid connector. At least it runs. Sounds very nice. And we changed the oil.
Sunday after church we're at Pick-N-Pull and snag two TCC solenoids. Lunch at Timmy's. Fire up the Civic and go break in the rings (full hard WOT to redline and hard off decel, again and again and again and again), then return and change the oil. Fresh cut on the brake rotors (warped - yuck!), and kid is ready for 6:30am start at work on Monday.
