I actually had a similar thing with my Subaru EJ255. This just has a pump to all the exhaust ports in the head, which operates on cold starts. These were completely blocked, and the car had done only 182,000km (or about 120,000 miles)
Lived the exact same scenario with my daughters 04' Civic, and you definitely hit all the points on the mark with this engine. Got 240K miles out of the old one with a head gasket done at 210K miles. She didn't check her oil and the oil pump/pan started to leak slightly, which lead to a shattered #4 rod. Luckily, about $200 got me a 160K mile shortblock from a PickNPull, pulled the 50lb block with my bare hands, resealed everything, dropped the new block in, swapped the old head on with 2 new intake valves and she's ready for another 200K miles.
@@dirtfarmer7472 - She learned that she can when she breaks her car, her dad will bail her out and fix it. The best option in cases like this is guiding them through the repair while they do all the work themselves. They will learn valuable skills and an appreciation for preventive maintenance.
You are a really great Dad to help your daughter with this and get her on the road again. Replacing a short block is no easy task. I imagine your daughter had a job and a family like all the rest of us. Thank you for helping her out.
Thankyou. The reality is most people don't learn, when it's a topic that doesn't interest them. And I get it, most people aren't mechanics, aren't gearheads and just want to get back to what they want. Life is busy and we can easily put thousands of miles on our cars without realizing it because we are too busy working/living. As the only mechanic in my family, I've spent my whole life making sure none of us have to incur the full costs of vehicle repair. I'm not "bailing anyone out".....I'm using my skills and knowledge to help the people that matter to me. Shes studying to be a marine biologist, my mom was a hair stylist, sisters are nurses..... I don't expect her or them to be faultless in regard to auto maintenace.
Best part of these teardowns is always the special care given to those "good parts" that everyone so wants saved. You know. Those rubber hoses and water pumps. Those parts that certain members of the community so desperately want.
We're starting to host teardown parties where friends come over and we watch your videos. Everyone leans forward and there's a hush in the room when its dipstick time, followed by cheering when the deed is done! 😄
I remember driving a civic home from the auction with 1 of these and it had 210 on it. I could not believe how perfect it ran with that mileage. They were great engines.
I have an 02 civic that has been turned into a "farm car". It has been beat on so much, overheated a handful of times, and hits the limiter on the regular. I keep oil, and coolant in it, and haven't overheated it yet after fixing the fans. It runs so smoothly, so quietly, like a sowing machine. Ironically out of my 5 vehicles I have, this one has been the most reliable. Only ever "breaking" twice. It needed a starter, and the fuel pressure regulator fell off the pump which was fixed for free with a zip tie.
I have two 2001 civic ex, 5 speed manual, 2 door coupes, I’m the original owner of both. 287,563 miles on one as I write this comment. That one is a daily driven, 120+ miles a day on the highway. The only major fix was when a clutch was needed at a little over 200k miles, and even that is a normal wear item. Other than that, original head gasket with no leaks, original piston rings, I’ve had to remove the EGR system twice and clean out the ports. It burns a little oil now but no smoke out the tail pipe and it’s only half quart between oil changes. The other one has 167,391 miles and only needs a driver side ball joint. 😅
I drive a Civic and am a maintenance freak because of video's like this. And you're absolutely correct - no one checks their oil levels anymore which is a real head scratcher since all manufacturers are going with extended drain intervals. Much higher likelihood of burning off a bit of oil between changes. Personally do it on the 1st of the month every month so I don't forget. Because I change my oil so often my oil never darkens and Honda uses an orange tip on their dipsticks, I hope there is a special place in hell for whoever came up with that idea. Trying to read honey coloured oil on orange? Dumbest idea ever.
It's more to do with the soft tension piston rings they started using in the quest for lower internal friction. This is what causes oil consumption problems and they've made the rings more thin (narrower) which adds to the problem as well as narrower oil control rings too that gum up much more easily. But agreed, extended oil change intervals allow sludge to slowly bulid up inside the engine. When the oil is no longer clear and honey colored it needs to be changed.
I'm pretty old. Let's just leave it at that. I worked at a gas station, and we always checked the oil on every car. For regular customers, we kept mental notes on oil levels, so we could often tell the customer if they were having oil consumption issues. Now that nearly everyone fuels themselves, I doubt many people ever check their oil. I make it a habit to check it every other tank, and a couple times a week on my BMW, because you just check oil level on the Idrive screen. Car manufacturers' oil change interval recommendations are a joke. Don't wait for the car to beg you for fresh oil. Just do it every 5,000 miles.
I think you nailed it. Good maintenance, but low oil level and high revs killed it. That piston looked like it was accidentally installed backwards, so It may be a case where this engine was rebuilt and reassembled improperly.
The reason for the disintegration of the lower timing belt cover and all that crud on the block in that area 10:48 is the worn oil pump housing o-ring. It is visible at 21:32 at about the eleven o'clock position. When that o-ring contracts from age it allows oil to exit, attracting all manner of road grime. It also lubricates the timing belt. This leak is often misdiagnosed as a leaking crank seal. This engine also requires a fair amount of patience and technique to remove all the air from the cooling system whenever the coolant is changed.
I have oil everywhere on that side, and I do believe it's from that seal. But at 180,000 miles I don't know if I should keep the OEM oil pump and just replace the seal or replace the whole pump. Any thoughts?
@@jfulton1795 Pump rarely goes bad. Just replace the O-ring. If you're close to when your timing belt is to be replaced, do it then. To replace that O-ring means a timing belt service and removing the oil pan and oil pump.
This brings me back a few years. I had an 05 EX civic with a 5 speed manual. The engine gave up at 216k miles but not quite as bad as that. It spun either the cylinder 1 or 4 rod bearing and I rebuilt it before really knowing anything about cars and engines. Then it spun the other rod bearing about 6k miles after I rebuilt it. Thank you for the great video as always.
I will bet you did not get the oil passages in the cam and the crankshaft cleaned out. That often calls for a machine shop to use EDM to remove the hardened plugs.
@johncooper4637 I didn't touch the head. I just bored it a few thousandths over and had the crank ground down a few thousandths and I put oversized pistons and bearings in
Looks like a well maintained Civic that was bought new and then given to Junior when he/she became driving age. Junior had a heavy foot and one too many times hammering the throttle to the floor killed it.
After listening to lots of head bolts on this channel I'm beginning to wonder if the creaky door sounds in horror movies are actually just remixed head bolts loosening out of an engine.
Mine just hit 300,000 miles and still daily driving it. I did the head gasket, clutch, water pump, timing belt, and the input shaft bearing, did all the work myself at 247,000 miles. Still going strong.
Been watching you now for quite a while while going to sleep and I heard you say you like to read positive comments on one of these… I’ve only personally tore down 1 engine completely (that I blew up) but ever since I tore down my 3.8 i’ve really enjoyed watching you do it the professional way! It really helps me know useless information like what engines have what flaws but it is still very interesting to me at least! 🤣 Maybe one day if you get the opportunity you could tear down a Honda 2.0t from the tenth generation models? I’ve seen lots and lots of 1.5 teardowns but it seems since the 2.0 is so much more reliable not a single person has recorded an actual teardown lile you do. That’s my current engine so i’d love to how they hold up to high mileage or what some common flaws might be. Thanks for making these videos!!!
a youtube channel that is super chill, makes me giggle, has a host whos voice is soothing enough to fall asleep to AND helps me learn more about cars? this is the perfect youtube channel
BS 01 EX civic 339000 miles on it burning a bit of oil due to needing stwm seals but apart from that practically zero issues. What you have there is a an abused engine that wasn't looked after.
got a 04 civic and am constantly making sure the coolant is topped up on it since replacing the head gasket would likely cost more than the vehicle is worth. best thing i have done is buy one of them radiator caps with the lever to release the pressure. if i release the pressure while the engine is hot when i am done driving it generally sucks most of the coolant back into the engine. it is definitely much easier than pumping the coolant from the over flow into a jug just so i can put it back in the rad again which is what i had been doing for a bit.
I remember those days lol. Before I did my head gasket, I had a whole routine of taking a transfer pump and hand pumping the coolant from the reservoir back into the radiator. I recommend replacing the gasket. You'll get your money's worth out the car in the long run. What we consider "worth it" is different to every person, and it's not always monetary. Even if you do it yourself, it's not a difficult job and these engines are great for learning to work on cars.
@@The513Warning it also needs a bunch of other stuff including a wheel bearing, lower control arm bushing, and a alternator if i attempt to remove or adjust the belt since the bolts will likely snap off inside it since i live in the last of salt and sand. the head gasket the honda guys recommend is $100 on its own and if you ad in the cost of all the other parts you should replace it is at least $1000 in parts. like i said i have found the radiator cap that you can release the pressure has helped a lot. been driving the vehicle for nearly 3 years with a bad head gasket.
@@crazzywolfie You can drive with a ripped lower control arm bushing just fine. Both of mine are completely ripped. They're on my list of things to replace, but they're not urgent. Worst case scenario, you get some steering wheel drift or shaking when braking. Honda sells the compliance bushings separately for $25. The challenge would be to get the old one out. Wheel bearings are also pretty cheap. You can get front KOYO bearings (an OEM supplier for Honda and a few Japanese cars) from NAPA for about $50. Take the spindle off and have a machine shop press it in for you for cheap. The rear bearings are stupid easy to replace too. I believe that the adjuster (butterfly bolt) and lock bolt for the alternator and A/C belt are aluminum. I live in an area where we get a lot of salt and even at the junkyard, those particular bolts are never rusty. It'll get kinda hard to remove due to different metals and constantly heating and cooling, but it usually comes out fine.
Another great video Eric. I do love the back story on the individual engine..what you do know of it as well as the engine family history...excellent info to have. As for this poor thing...for such a small engine that's a monster sized inspection port!! I haven't seen a crank as deeply beat as that one though...that took a helluva beating for sure!! Another Saturday night of engine destruction and education...thanks Eric:-) One other thing...when you were cracking the cam cap bolts...the creaking reminded me of a haunted house..LOL Happy Halloween to one and all🙂
One thing that comes to mind about the piston turning is that because of VTEC, some valves don't open fully and thus create asymmetry, and perhaps the piston hit an open valve on only one side, and since the valves are at an angle, they bend and sent the piston in a spin... Also if you look carefully at 16:42 there is only one valve bent, the 3 others seat correctly, supporting this theory 🙂
Do you think that would break the connecting rod though? I think it would damage the valve and top of piston yes. But twist a rod and turn the piston 180 degrees on the dot is a little suspicious and there's not a lot of damage to the head. Could it have been assembled wrong? Idk much on v tech Hondas. Just curious
A bent valve won’t cause a piston to spin in the bore .. a broken valve maybe but not a bent valve .. it’s not possible unless the connecting rod was already separated from the piston wrist pin .
@@mtbridingog9083 exactly man! I think the piston and rod where assembled incorrectly and put in the block backwards it explains why just that rod gave way and that it was almost perfectly 180° the opposite direction from the rest. It'll still run with a back ward piston! The question is for how long..?? Or the rod broke first which had the right amount force to rotate the piston when the two peaces hit each other again but the hole in the block says other whys cause that rod left the building probably ended up a couple counties down yonder. Over there 👉👆👇👈
They all open, it's just that one intake valve opens more than the other when the engine isn't running on the mid lobe (or the larger lobe, in this case). If one valve remained closed, fuel would pool in the port.
Back when I worked at the Honda dealership there was a lady with a seventh gen civic (non vtec), I remember her specifically for 2 good reasons- 1. That civic was always out of oil even after only 3000 miles and 2. She had a blowie so any time I pulled her ticket I had to go out to the lobby to grab her to get her to start her car 😂
I have to wonder with how clean it was and with no scoring or anything, if the engine wasn't rebuilt, but the assembler put in #2 backwards from the start. I don't know Honda engines enough, but for others, it would affect the rod being too loose on either the front or back, and the other direction being clamped too tight. And that would explain the heat build up in just one crank throw. If not that, then a single-cylinder detonation comes to mind, but I still don't think it could spin a piston.
I recently lost my 05 Civic with a manual trans with a D17a2 to a blown head gasket at almost 191k. I bought it at 130k and it was almost as if at every 6k miles there was something that i had to shove my hand shoulder deep to fix something. After getting stranded for the 15th time I just bought a 2012 Tacoma. I loved my Civic but I'm glad its dead. It was a great first car. I'm gonna miss the almost non-existent Vtec.
I bet that the car came from the factory with cylinder #2 installed 180º wrong. Probably at the point where the connecting rod and wrist pin went together with it. Great video as always. Hey, how about a 1MZ-FE Toyota engine? Going to revive my '01 Sienna soon, needs rear head gasket/work. Have a great week!
That's what I was thinking too because it seems very unlikely that the piston just happened to turn exactly 180 degrees when the rod broke. Honda engines usually don't have those kinds of assembly errors from the factory, but that's clearly a possibility in this case.
I agree. The 180 degree install issue may have given the bearing shell an early chance to spin as the forces of rotation were counter to the design. And given the right circumstances the bearing spun leading to overheating and destruction.@@jaredbawden6707
It was definitely time for Honda to retire the D-series by the time the D17 came out, but my ex had one that I maintained from 100k miles to 240k+ miles, and it showed absolutely no sign of being worn out. It didn't burn oil, but it did have a coolant leak at the back of the head, I suspect a new gasket at the water passage (as Honda calls it) would have solved the issue, but we split up and it was no longer my problem.
Because of the highly localised damage, I think it's more likely that one of the rod bolts failed in some way. Likely at high RPM/effort, the damage then happened so quickly and terminally it did not have time to travel to other parts of the engine.
I have had two civics with this engine. The first one went 327,000 miles and the head gasket started to give. The second one did the same but at around 180,000 miles. I paid a Honda dealer 2500.00 to perform a head gasket replacement. That was 60,000 miles ago. They did a great job. My crv with 240,000 miles burns oil. However, I can go 5,000 miles between oil changes and the oil level doesn’t budge on the dipstick for my civic. This engine has a head gasket weakness but it’s still a really good engine.
Another great video, thankyou Eric. I've been up for 25 hours but just saw that you uploaded your weekly teardown and stayed up half an hour to watch. Worth it as usual. Never seen a piston do a 180 in the bore. Good effort! Keep it up :)
Darn! Should've done this teardown a month ago, I would've totally bought that PCV breather from you! My D17 at home has one heck of a vacuum leak from a rusty breather
If the engines were bad and the automatic transmission were worse. lucky they were a Honda easy to work on. This video explained why when I bought my car it had brand new head.
That little Honda engine failure reminds me of the little Daewoo Lanos engine failure that my cousin did to a prototype Daewoo vehicle that he borrowed & blew up the engine catastrophically when he decided to red line it during a street race 🏁, I was picking up engine parts on the side of the road halfway from the 1/4 mile drag ,they was chunkage everywhere & rods was pushed completely thru the block & sheetmetal as well, it literally went out in a bang 💥,ended up reselling the vehicle for export, minus its engine & hood ,wish I kept the exploded block for a good laugh
As a Honda tech from that era I can say that was a great engine if it wasn't badly neglected and you used the blue Honda coolant. Clogged egr ports occasionally with very high miles
D17s had a well known issue where the head studs would pull out of the block and cause the cylinder head to lift up if overheated even the littlest bit. The factory head studs are very weak. This issue can be fixed 100% by installing ARP head studs on the engine. Once that is done, the head lifting up will never happen if god forbid it ever overheats again. I’d say it’s worth the money and extra insurance to bulletproof your D17 by doing this. It’s a great engine despite this issue, just an extremely underpowered one.
Im with you, the old muscle cars were a hell of a lot more fun to work on, I’m almost 75, and still have one left, just finishing up a 5 year frame off, I pick up the hood on our new PU, and wonder, where the hell is the motor? 😳🤔🤦♂️
I had two ‘01, five speed civics as work cars. First one blew a hole in piston 2 at 300k and my 2nd one started having multiple cam sensor failures at 240k. Was told that the head wears out and allows too much cam movement. I bought the cheapest sensors in bulk off amazon, kept the top timing cover off, carried a 10mm wrench and changed the sensor every 1,000 miles or whenever it would throw the code and go in limp mode. Junked it at 260k miles. Ran great otherwise
Says a lot about Honda that your complaint isn’t that they are bad, it’s that they aren’t excellent. It’s impressive you still get 200k out of the bad engine.
And I always thought that Honda engines were bullet proof ! Love the BMW E34 at 29:52 Years ago I used to have a 1988 535i sport auto with the 3.4 (3430cc) 12 valve straight 6 engine in it and loved that thing !
I can tell you from personal experience the D17 can make decent power. Just not for very long. We (my dad and I) race a Honda and use the D17. If you use a D16 manifold, you take about 5 inches of runner length from stock which increases upper RPM torque. We have had this same problem but in cylinder 1 (always cylinder1). After a ton of work over the destruction of 6 or 7 engines, dad machined a smaller oil restricor for the valve train which should (I emphasize SHOULD) help keep more oil available for the crank and rods. Also, the K20 bearing can fit to give you the rod to crank bearing clearance that would be more appropriate in a racing application. This set up is the one we just installed after the last meltdown. So we have no idea if any of this will actually result in better longevity. If you figure what happened to this engine, I'd be suoer interested to know.
From new, my 05 Civic never skipped a beat, never blew a head gasket nor burned oil, traded it at 178K. Willing to bet this was an overrevved engine by a missed upshift.
With the size of the dent in that crank journal, looks like the engine stopped very suddenly. Which would explain why there isn't much trash run through everything.
Somebody installed the piston #2 in the wrong sense, from the factory. It's weird, but the probability that a piston turns exactly 180º is very unlikely.
I'm currently driving a 2005 Honda Civic EX coupe with a manual transmission and it has been junk. 266,000 miles and 2 head gaskets, 3 catalytic converters, 1 clutch, countless electrical issues and 2 alternators equaling out to be probably more than 3 times what we paid for the car. It's sad because my dad bought a 2002 Civic LX sedan with 50,000 miles in 2006 and when we sold it in 2018 it had 435,000 miles on it. This EX coupe must have had a very hard life before we got it.
I like every Honda with two wheels. I like the Honda Kick-N-Go with three wheels. I don't like ANY Honda with four wheels! But Erik....I like every Porsche 928 no matter how many wheels it has~! Great video!
I bet the piston rotated by making it's way down to where the skirt kissed the crank at some point after the rod let go and the crank slapped it and spun it
When that crank came back around and hit that rod and caused the damage to the crank journal it probably had so much force that it spun the piston around
31:40 Well heck, if you can't play B-Ball then that potential side-gig as an Adam Sandler body double is a big no-go!! .. No offense meant, but I HAD to say it! lolol,
My Outback likes to consume oil, about a half to full quart every thousand miles. This could be the video that puts more urgency to my response when I see the quantity is low on the stick.
Ya know what's funny? Is I recall a meme one of my friends had given me which was a form of cursed knock knock joke. Which was Honda Civic, and it's engine being like "knock knock" with the car being like "whose there?" and engine then saying "cylinder 3." in reference to the fact that people tended to push those cars a bit too hard to the point of failure. And it looks like this engine suffered that same failure too. If albeit one cylinder 2 instead of 3.
