coolantwater from valve cover? hm - Honda Prelude Forum

Rasmusm · 05-30-2011, 02:02 AM

Hey there

Im having a strange problem with my lude..
I noticed when I took off my air filter there would be small drops of coolantwater right before the TB.
I then blocked off my FITV because I thought hm okay it could be leaking into the TB or something.. That wasnt the case..

Yesterday I then decided to catch-can the tube that goes from valve cover to airfilter to see if it was comming from there..

Result:

It can be hard to see, taken with my phone.. But the bottle was empty when I installed it and took her for a 10-15km ride and i think theres around 1cm of coolant water there :S ?

I took off my valvecover to check if it was a blown head gasket I guess everything would be soaked with some whiteish oil/coolant mix..

This is what I found

Ye I cant see any thing wrong here.. But under the valvecover it self was a whole different story..

As you can see its soaked with that white coolant/oil mixture :s but why isnt it down in all my oil?

Also oil looks fine when I check my dipstick, i seriously cant figure this one out. Am I facing a blown headgasket? It was changed 3000km ago

Hope to hear from you

its kinda frustrating tbh..

Thanks
Best regards Rasmus
Denmark

Believe513 · 05-30-2011, 11:22 AM

Wow. That looks pretty bad man. I emptied out my catch can last week n it looked jus like that. But my valve cover n cams are as clean as can b. I think I blew my head gasket (fixing that) n my stuff don't look like that. But its possible. Water from the cooling jets could b intering ur combustion chamber. Also, water entering your intake? Or in ur fuel tank? Those are possibilities bro. Oh n also, water n oil don't mix, the density is different (im sure u knew that) but all the water might b sitting at the bottom n ur stick doesn't read to the very bottom of ur oil pan. Jus sayin. Maybe u should change ur oil and see what's up. Wont hurt anything to try it.

Rasmusm · 05-30-2011, 11:45 AM

Hi man, ye its kinda bad i guess...
Thing is first I noticed water drops when I took off the air filter. Now I figured out where its comming from.
Water and oil dont mix but it gets that color when it does

thats why im confussed its only in the top of valve cover and not in rest of engine.

And why would there come colant water out of that tube where I attached the bottle? That doesnt make any sense imo

minilogoguy18 · 05-30-2011, 06:25 PM

^I remember your post on H-T and the problem could be the headgasket. If you think about it the PCV system pulls blow by from the head that is pushed in there from the combustion process and if the headgasket is leaking the coolant could be forced up with the blow by and pulled into the PCV system. It's all on the underside of the valve cover because it's evaporating into a vapor inside the hot engine.

Have you even tested the headgasket yet? A simple way to do it is to just have a coolant funnel attached to the radiator, fill the funnel so that some coolant is sitting in it and run the car to see if bubbles come up. If so then the headgasket is definitely bad.

Believe513 · 05-31-2011, 12:00 AM

Yea well sometimes water gets in ur valves, air and gas, and it gets evaporated, goes up and is usually released through ur exhaust system, ever feel that smoke coming out ur pipe. Its humid. Cuz there's water vapor in it. Now why the water is coming out of that tube, cuz some of the oil isn't burned when the engine busts, so it basically resends the oil through the process to burn oil the unburned oil. Now since u got that head gasket blown, its leaking that water into that pipe also. Since I have a catch can, the oil that doesn't get burned, doesn't go back into the engine. It gets sent to the catch can. Its to ensure my engine doesn't recycle anything bad (like that stuff that's on the valve cover.) N it works cuz when I empty my catch can, most of the oil that comes out looks like a chocolate shake, oil n water mixture. So yea, u might wanna try that test out. They have another test for checking if head gaskets are blown. Look it up. Pretty Kool. Hope u find the problem.

Rasmusm · 05-31-2011, 03:06 AM

Thanks guys, so im looking at a blown head gasked. Gonna get it tested ye.
Now that Im gonna put in a new head gasked would you recomment me using some ARP head studs or something? Its a build with pro2 cams mahle gold 11.5:1 and stuff like that.