PLEASE HELP POSSIBLE HEADGASKET

[NotSerious]

According to Scotty, if you switch coils to different cylinders and the misfire moves, then it is a bad coil.

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[hobby-man]

Did you check what the other person suggested? Was the original misfiring cylinder plug cleaner or any different visually?

Head lift is not super common at that level of boost, you'd really start running into issues above 30 PSI.

If the plugs looked similar, the misfire followed the plug, and the coolant and oil look normal, then replacing the plugs and coils are a good first check.

 

[NicKoLi]

Did you check what the other person suggested? Was the original misfiring cylinder plug cleaner or any different visually?

Head lift is not super common at that level of boost, you'd really start running into issues above 30 PSI.

If the plugs looked similar, the misfire followed the plug, and the coolant and oil look normal, then replacing the plugs and coils are a good first check.

thank you broski. Im literally praying that its just that. I ordered msd blaster coils and oem plugs and im gonna gap the to .019 which is where the car seems to like it. Probably because the gap expands as time goes by with heat. I will keep everyone posted, but im really hoping since the misfire moved with the change that its just that. I did a combustion leak test which is blue and turns yellow if there is exhaust gases. It turned a lighter shade of blue tiny bit of green to it. Though it did accidentally suck up some coolant so it could have mixed a bit. Keep me in your prayers guys I already lost everything else due to covid. =(

 

[CAPTS]

for peace of mind take the head out then install ARP studs, new plugs & coils good idea too.
do keep us updated. any compression test done yet ? what are the readings ?

 

[mauiSI19]

for peace of mind take the head out then install ARP studs, new plugs & coils good idea too.
do keep us updated. any compression test done yet ? what are the readings ?

good advice headgasket lift is actually common with cars running ethanol.

however the ones I know of were stock turbo on E and not making 30+ psi of boost

 

[NicKoLi]

for peace of mind take the head out then install ARP studs, new plugs & coils good idea too.
do keep us updated. any compression test done yet ? what are the readings ?

I really dont have the money for that at the moment

 

[BoxsterSteve]

Yes most likely. Take out your plugs and check if there's coolant in the cylinders since you were missing coolant.

You likely won’t see a coolant puddle in the cylinder, it would have hydro locked first.
But if the suspect cylinder has an obviously much cleaner spark plug, that’s a big tell for coolant entering and being burned off.

 

[NicKoLi]

You likely won’t see a coolant puddle in the cylinder, it would have hydro locked first.
But if the suspect cylinder has an obviously much cleaner spark plug, that’s a big tell for coolant entering and being burned off.

that wasnt the case. Im really hoping and it looks like just a bad coil. I did do the combustion leak test and it came back most likely fine. It did change color a little but again some coolant got in the test and just gave it the tiniest change in color. Let me hold onto hope fellas lol

 

[CAPTS]

I really dont have the money for that at the moment

at least replace it with new gaskets & OEM bolts but find out the culprit 1st & verify.
it sucks but you'll still have to fix it before too much damage.

 

[hobby-man]

Not sure this helps but Civic cylinders are numbered 1-4 from the passenger side (left to right) facing the engine from the front of the car. Belts are nearest #1. From your entries it appears like you're checking and moving parts on #1 & 2 but your counts are changing on #3 &4.

He said the following above

Are the cylinders in a row one through four? I looked at the third one from the left im assuming thats cylinder three it looked very lightly damp at the most. Again the coolant was kind of low so I dont know if that was like that before. I just checked it again and it was gurlging a bit after rocking the car a little bit. I was going to move coils around and look in all the plugs... Any other advice. Apparently leak tests and compression tests dont work well on this car, they appear normal

Sounds like he's looking at the right ones to me?

 

[domicubarican]

From what I've read on the first post, it sounds like you had a bad coil. Pretty common on turbocharged engines. I've seen it happen from old 240's with sr20's to modern day cars like the turbo ecotecs Chevy puts out. The heat eventually messes with the coil. Everything will be fine under vacuum but as soon as you go hard on the throttle it'll sputter/break up like it's hitting the fuel cut-off.

 

[Gavin_Danitz]

Stock block?

 

[JonnySuicide]

1. Milky oil
2. White smike
3. Taste the oil, is it sweet? (Old skool)

 

[Brvndxn]

Could be head gasket & warped cylinder heads that allowed some coolant to creep in and enter your oil , and causing misfires, that’s what happened to me

 

[Syphrus]

I've got nearly exact same situation. Gapping down the plugs seems to fix the problem. I even burned out a coil pack running plugs at "factory gap" of .030 I originally had to gap them down to .016(which is weird) I later brought them up to .026 and only got a minor stutter. This was on hondata flex base map. I just flashed to stock, stutter is gone. I'm going to toy around with the highest gap I can run without stutter once I get my new tune. I was also missing coolant when first bought the car, but I'm hoping that is previous owner not fully filling. He also replaced all hoses with silicone which are notorious for losing coolant. I did compression test(fine) and the blue liquid test(similar result to yours, slight color change, but far from yellow) from my research, if it's not turning yellow, you passed. I even had my son rev to redline while testing. I haven't done leakdown test. Its been 3 weeks and coolant is same level. Take this with a grain of salt, we could both have gasket leaks. But I've seen people need to run a wide array of plug gaps to get their cars to not miss at higher rpm. Some can run factory gap at 28psi, some run .020 with lower boost. Maybe variance in coil pack output? I was also getting the misfire for a second or 2 on startup. This is by far my greatest concern. It went away with the lower gap. So could be attributed to the plug gaps? Hopefully the low gaps weren't just masking the coolant in the cylinders on startup. Just some food for thought, I hope it works out for ya!

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