budfreak00

I have a 94 Civic, no major issues except for one curious one...I have to keep adding coolant to the radiator but have not noticed any dripping...what could be causing this?

need4speed1303

A blown head gasket would make the coolant leak into the cylinder to be burned off during driving. Smoking from the tailpipe under hard acceleration is a good indication. Checking your oil would be a good way to check. If it looks really thin or dis-colored































I would also check near the heater core inside the car. Coolant lines run inside the car then back out for heat. You may be leaking inside the car. Probably behind the dash

Blue Sky Dreaming

I couldn't have said it any better than the first contributor, he has the most probable answer (well done). It's exactly what happened to my Civic when the first head gasket was leaking. The coolant leaked through the head gasket and into the block, and was burned off during combustion to such a great extent that I could smell coolant coming out of the exhaust.































If this is the problem, it will be somewhat expensive to fix, but after a little machine work to the cyliner walls and mating surfaces of the block and head, the rest of the parts can be done in your own garage with the proper repair manual. THE GOOD NEWS IS a small bit of information that you may not even care about, but both times my head gasket leaked or blew, I had to have most of the moving parts resurfaced just a little bit, but this gave me a slightly noticable power increase when I reassembled the engine and drove it (not to mention a n increase in exhaust noise and tone;-).