Well hello spark plug, my name is piston.

Headed over to help a cow-orker wire in a smart thermostat among several other electrical projects yesterday when my trusty old 90 Accord started spitting & sputtering. Felt kind of like water in the gas maybe.

Made it about another mile & it died while slowing for a stop light. Wouldn't restart. Had it towed home & started scoping it out this morning. Just didn't sound right. Getting spark, it's trying to start.

Ended up deciding to pull the plugs. Started at #4 and worked back to #1. 4 did not feel at all good coming out. Makes sense now I guess



1-4 L to R.



Thought for sure I must have broken the timing belt so popped the valve cover. Nope, that wasn't it. Hard to believe that as thick as the grooves are on those things that it could skip a tooth either. FWIW: timinig belt/water pump/idlers/plugs etc were done about 25k ago.

Maybe I'll pop the head to see what kind of carnage happened. Car's got 240k on it, I put 100k on it in the last 12 years with a purchase price of $2,500. I got my $ worth out of it

Now it's either time to suck it up & buy rain gear to ride the Magna or Nishiki to work or drive the big truck to work until the kiddo heads out to grad school. Wife wants the kid's Hondacar to replace the 03 Cavalier she's driving now.

Borescope it and maybe save pulling the head. If you see a holed/cracked piston why waste the time?

Good call...I keep seeing those inspection cams in HoboFreight emails and have been wondering how I could use one

dropped or broke a valve in 4 and transferred parts into 3 from the looks of it, head, cylinderand piston are junk.

That's probably how it went down.

Emailed a guy off of CL this evening about his 150k mile F22 engine. I think he wants this car more than I want to put a used engine into it.

I figured I'd give it one more shot before I let it go for scrap price. Hit it with a little starting fluid just in case I cleared everything out with the vacuum earlier & that there was just some water in the fuel.

Now I've got a ventilated valve cover:


No harm, no foul. It was a goner anyway. If the guy doesn't buy it tomorrow I'll tear into it to figure out what happened at least.

Blowing the valve cover apart is just like something I would do...

It must have swallowed a valve.

Another good reason to not use starting fluid in spark-ignition engines.

That wouldn't have happened if everything was sealed up the way it's supposed to be.

Haha thats awesome, at this point its like what can we do,, have seen some nasty ones at work but that sucks because i gotta fix them. Yeah will be interesting to see.

Hmmm, Honda valves. Two piece valves that like to break at the weld in high mileage engines. Had two bikes do it with catastrophic consequences. Currently replacing my Xl600rmg valves with one piece kibblewhites.

Uh, OK.

I last changed the timing belt on my 255k miles (1995) civic at 140k.:eek1

maybe I should put a new one on soon.....

So, were you able to take the head off and see what went wrong?

Haven't had a chance to get to it yet. Will start on yarding the head off of there this afternoon if the weather cooperates.

I have an Accord with similar engine with more mileage than yours. I'm curious. Thanks.