1999 Honda Civic Overheating

100

Asked by HondaGirl3000 Sep 09, 2018 at 03:10 AM about the 1999 Honda Civic EX

Question type: Maintenance & Repair

I’m going to try to explain this as efficiently as I can.
My car has had a problem running hot since I got it
a year and a half ago. The problem stops in the
winter and comes back in the summer. This time it’s
much worse than usual. I have to add water to the
radiator and the reservoir before every drive. There
seems to be no water leaking anywhere at all, but
I’m losing coolant like crazy. It makes me think
there’s an internal leak or that somehow the water is
turning into steam within the system. I took the car
to 3 different mechanics and was told 3 different
things. One said there’s a leak somewhere that he
can’t find, another said it’s the water pump, and the
last one said it’s a blown head gasket. I don’t know
who to believe. I don’t think it’s the water pump,
because there is no leak. I don’t think it’s a blown
head gasket because there is no smoke coming
from the exhaust, no milky oil, no oil in the radiator,
no antifreeze on any spark plugs, and no loud
engine. The same mechanic who told me it’s a
blown HG also told me that it wouldn’t make sense
to replace a HG without doing an engine swap
which is another $2k that I don’t have. The car has
196xxx miles on it, but the engine runs like a champ
and these cars tend to last a very long time. Side
note: I have replaced the thermostat, radiator cap,
and cleared out air bubbles from the hoses.
Anybody got any ideas of what exactly the problem
might be? I can only drive about 20 minutes before
it starts running hot forcing me to turn the heat on
full blast.

3 Answers

100

Ed92692: why do I have to do an engine swap as well as replacing the HG? My engine runs really well. I have a friend who will do the HG for me for $300 and he said he’d go ahead and replace the water pump and timing belt while he’s at it. Seems like it might be worth a try.

1 people found this helpful.
100

Haha I’m not sure my current partner would like that very much. LOL. I should be good to go if I just get the HG fixed though? I don’t want to spend all of that money only to have the engine blow a month later like this mechanic is saying it will.

4 people found this helpful.
100

The reason he suggested an engine swap is because he said that someone had to have abused the car in the past for the head gasket to blow. He’s afraid that the engine was affected by that, but I drive the car every day and it drives like a dream minus the temperature. Everything else is perfect. I do my tune ups by myself after learning how to do all of that stuff. The second mechanic I took the car to said my engine looks amazing and very clean (he basically drooled all over my car LOL), so I don’t see a need to replace it. I’m thinking maybe the blown head gasket was my fault and it resulted from a bad water pump. Water pump maybe caused my car to overheat and the temp gauge hit red one time, so that may have caused the HG to bust. That’s why I’m going to go ahead and replace all of that stuff at once.

5 people found this helpful.

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