OK, I decided to do some preventative maintenance on my (new to me) CR-V. The timing belt and accessory drive belts and radiator hoses were of unknown provenance and the radiator had an occasional weeping leak at the top tank; ordered the parts a while back (from Phil), got ahead on some other stuff and decided to dig in and "git 'er done." Everything went pretty well; it's not a really easy car to work on but everything fit and after I was done it started and didn't make clanking noises...drove into Cameron and back yesterday and all was OK.

Hit the highway headed for Austin today, got 10mi from home, my feet were cold so I turn on the heater and realize there wasn't any hot air coming out...I check the temp gauge and it is PEGGED!

When I replaced the radiator, I forgot to put the clamp on the bottom radiator hose, it blew the hose off the nipple, drained the cooling system, overheated and, at the least, (I'm guessing) warped the head. Random miss now, throwing "intermittent miss all cylinders" DTC code and has what looks like combustion pressure in the radiator(bubbles).

I have killed a perfectly good engine.

GAWD, I think I'm losing my groove on this stuff.

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.

Bummer, R Leo. (I have a bucket of relatives in the Cameron area).

I am definitely in the market for a crate motor. A Honda B20Z to be exact.

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.

With disaster comes opportunity!

I would now look and see if the CRV was available as a diesel, and if japanese half cuts can be had for your year and model

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This post brought to you by Carl's Jr.

Never a diesel in the US market and no way am I buying a JDM engine.

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.

You could get one half of a foreign version as car parts. The toyota truck guys do this all the time to source diesel variants never available in the us, cutting the running drivin car in half removes all the import problems with a non epa certified car, and what remains are whatever issues you might have in your state with registration. Freqently the vehicles are in running condition.

Worked for a shop years ago that did this for a customers toyota previa. That was mid engined, but it was a trip to get a 4 wheel drive diesel drivetrain for a previa minivan in the mail from japan, including the dash and entire wiring harness

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This post brought to you by Carl's Jr.

The whole point of buying this car was to extract myself from 'car projects.' Well, that and the little thing gets something like 24mpg on regular which, around here, is >.60/gallon cheaper than diesel.

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.

Listen, I'm just making annoying suggestions.

I feel your pain though, there's nothing worse than the feeling of disaster immediately after the feeling of success, especially if its a small oversight that created the situation in the first place.

We've all done similar things though with varying degrees of severity, at least it was your own car if their has to be a small silver lining.

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This post brought to you by Carl's Jr.

Ha!

The weird thing is that I had a feeling that something could/was going wrong all through this maintenance project so I worked even more slowly and carefully than usual (I'm pretty slow anyway but not all that careful obviously). And, right before I left the farm, as I drove past my big flatbed trailer, I got this mental image of the CR-V sitting up on it. The Honda is all wheel drive so after I trashed the engine, it got to ride back home on a slide-on...(insert sci-fi music and sound effects here) ...that was just about the height of my trailer.

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.

damn

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Jim

I feel your pain. Is a whole new motor necessary? What about a head? It didn't run out of oil.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

It got hot enough that when I tried to restart, it wouldn't crank until it cooled off so I'm betting the cylinders are scuffed too.

However, when I got it back home and reattached the hose and refilled the cooling system, it started right up and didn't have a death rattle...the miss came on after I shut it off, reset the overheat DTC and then restarted.

I'm not cranking again without pulling plugs. Don't want to bend a rod...

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.

I'd try just repairing the head first seeing as how it did start up. The 1st wife ran a 4 cyl Mazda MPV real hot years ago and actually relaxed the rings enough that it did not have any compression. It would not start after going through the cylinder head. I ended up having to totally rebuild that one.

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Jim

Jim, you and Kerry make a good point. It's easy enough to pull the head and, I can take a look at the cylinders while it's opened up. One good thing is that I'm running Mobil-1 and that oil is pretty durable. It may have saved those cylinder walls.

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.

I can't believe you bought a Honda and made yourself a "project".

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Jim