White smoke and Oily Plugs

[Nedi]

Hi Guys
Here is my problem

I have Honda Civic 1989, one night I noticed loss of power so I checked my spark plags and found out one of them was bad. When I replaced I noticed oil around plug, anyway I changed the plug and car seemed to be fine. The other day I went to mall without any problems but when I came from the mall and started the car there was alot of white smoke coming out and car seem to be straggling to stay running. I went and replaced all spark plugs and 3 out of 4 were oily. After replacing spark plugs car seemed to be fine again but going home I noticed my temp gauge was high so I pulled over and added pre-mixed antifreeze and temp gauge went down and I came home with no problems. One day later my temp gauge was running high again, and I was missing coolant, there are no signs of external leaks and sometimes white smokes comes on and car is straggling to say on.

Any advice would be appreciated

[Tofuboy]

I think it's time for you to decide if it's worth the money to replace a head gasket set for your engine.

Is there anymore signs of oily plugs after you changed to the new plugs?

For the oily plugs, I think the valve seals are going bad (should check your engine oil level since it seems like you are loosing oil also)

As for the coolant consumption, most likely the coolant is being pulled into the cyclinder and being burn (bad head gasket). That also explain why you have white smoke coming out of your tail pipe.

By changing the head gasket set, it should take care of the problems you have.

[Nedi]

Thanks Tofuboy for your replay
Let me update you on today status of the car.
I went down and check my spark plugs for oil and guess what there was none. I added coolant and started the car and there was no smoke and car run fine. When it wormed up to normal operation I checked again spark plugs for oil and there was none. I turned off the car and started it again, small puff of smoke came out and then stoped smoking and run fine again.There is no shortage of oil, if anything looks more then it should be. But it does not look milk-shaky .

[95cord]

its prolly not your head gasket, if anything it should be your valve cover gasket. i had the same problem in my probe and it was the valve cover gasket. if it was your head gasket you would see water in oil or oil in water and would prolly experience overheating.

[97CivicX]

it would have nothing to do with the valve cover gasket, at all. my guess is the headgasket is blown. its a pretty common problem with civics when the millage gets up there

[Nedi]

The mileage on this car is only 70k miles I bought it from old guy who had all records and nice maintenance on it. Today I found out where my coolant is going. It's coming out on the tailpipe even when there is no white smoke tailpipe is very wet and smoke is very moistured. I lost about 4 L of coolant on 100 miles even dought it was not smoking white smoke all the time. Any suggestions is good and thanks for replys.

[Greenblurr93]

as mentioned many time before.... head gasket

[Brizow]

Head gasket. Check your the coolant lines. Make sure you don't have a crack in one. If you are burning coolant it will smell kinda fruity.
I would definately check that head gasket it sounds like that is a definate problem. Are you running a D15B2? The miles you said arn't real high. But the 1.5 heads aren't the greatest. I have a 91 Civic and know that all to well. Pull the head off and check.
If you need some help with that just ask, or I suggest you get a Hayes manual if you don't already. They are a big help. I hope you get everything worked out man.

[civickiller]

theres no way for the coolant to get into the engine other than into the combustion chamber, so its either a headgasket or worse

[Nedi]

Thanks guys for all your input. I am getting shop manual for this car and I will tackle this myself because I dont think it is worth paying $1000 dollars to a shop. So if I screw up then I will just look for another car.

[Privatebigandrew]

that old of a car with that low of miles can be just as bad if not worse than same year high mileage. But yeah, i will go as far as to say ot "is" a head gasket, or warped head or warped block problem. Everything you said points directly to it. Or you could have a slight crack in the cylinder wall, but that is highly unlikely.

[Tofuboy]

Good luck on your repair Nedi.

If you have any questions just post them, I am sure some of us will have answers to your problems.

FYI. you might want to change the water pump, timing belt and tensioner in the process of changing the gasket set, this way you can save yourelf some labor also.

Welcome to AF

[Nedi]

Old man changed water pump and timing belt when car had 47k miles so I would assume that should be okey.

[Nedi]

Hi Guys
I found site where to download service manuals for Honda Civic maybe it will be useful for some of you that have this type of car. Unfortunatly they don't have one for my type of car but I downloaded others and I think I got pritty good idea what it takes to change Head Gasket. Two things I need are
One is how thight Cylinder Head Bolts should be and sequence
Other is I can't determine what is my engine type. I obtained following information about my car from carfax
Year/Make/Model: 1989 HONDA CIVIC DX
Body Style: Sedan 4 DR
Engine Type: 1.5L L4 FI
Manufactured In: JAPAN

The site for Service Manuals is
http://download.honda-fanatics.nl/manual/

[civickiller]

second from the top. just go to napa and buy a haynes or chilton manual. alot easier.