Civic EG

Ok people, as some of you may know I've replaced the head gasket on my D16Z6. I've yet to post my project topic yet but I will do in the future.

Anyway, when I did the HG job I didn't completely flush out the remaining water & any other crap that was still ligering in the block so when I put everything back together, I simply topped up my rad. I didn't bleed the system properly to begin with due to my situation at the time but in any case I will continue to explain what I've done.

After the car got resprayed etc etc, I bled the system and left it idling with the fans on. Allowed the tempreture gauge to go up, and continued filling when required and it all went well, allowed the rad fan to kick in which it did...all good. Put the rad cap back on all good.

Now, everytime I drive, the tempreture gauge drops to cold. When I idle it goes back up. It has never overheated yet, but everytime I check, it's as though I'm losing water/anti-freeze.

Also a few days when I checked, the coolant was back filling back into the expansion tank, right to the top. So I emptied it back through the rad from the expansion bottle. Next day, it was filled up again. Also I've noticed some of the coolant on the radiator itself on top, like a little puddle of it, as if it's leaked from somewhere.

I've had it sniff tested to check if the Head gasket has gone again (if I did the job properly) and he did the test several times and it slightly changed colour after like 3times of doing the test, but he reckons cause it took long to change, it could be just some trace of c02 from where I didn't flush the system out when I did the job.

He reckons it could be a stat problem? It's fustrating because for all I know it's the head gasket or something, and I don't enjoy driving it cause I know in the back of my mind the cooling system isn't doing it's job properly, the temp just fluctuates all the time from middle to cold, and I don't know if it's coincidence or not but when I'm drivin on level ground, it goes to cold, when I go up a hill, you can see the temp gauge move back to normal tempreture slowly, but when I go down a hill or level out it goes back to cold.

It's annoying how I have to constantly check the level of water all the time and I'm afraid of driving it long'ish distances due to my past experience from when the head gasket was blown and the top rad hose blew up on me on the motorway. Also recently the coolant doesn't seem to be back filling into the expansion tank anymore, the level keeps dropping all the way to the min level.

What's the problem people? Sorry for long post.

Thanks

I'm not suspendedhatch, but I would say to take your thermostat out and buy a new one from Honda, they're cheap.
If you want to test it, put a pot of water on the stove and boil it and see if it opens/closes.

If that's not your problem then I suspect you have a slight HG leak which is forcing air into your coolant passage and forcing your coolant out, through the overflow tank.

A compression test or leakdown test could help determine this.

also you can drain your coolant and look for any oil film on the surface, that's a sure sign.

Why would you put my name on this? These guys know a lot more than I do. When it comes to engine internals, I avoid it like the plague. And if I can't, then I open up the Helms and follow step by step.

My apologies, I didn't explain why I wanted you to read it most of all. I genuinely thought that I remembered a while back reading a topic regarding something very similar to this, and if I remember correctly you had the cure for this. Perhaps I read wrong, was quite a while back now. Didn't mean to sound like no one else knew what they were talking about. Apologies once again.

Thanks Teal, I think when it stops snowing here in the UK I will take the thermostat out and give her a run, see if it solves the problem. If it doesn't I will take my EG to a garage to get those tests done.

Knowing my luck it's my HG again. I'll let you guys know how I get on. Meanwhile I'm about to post my project up in the other section.