Blown Head Gasket

[Dzmitry]

So my brother has an AT 2004 Honda Civic EX. He has had some recent repairs done to various suspension parts, radiator, blah blah. Something in the 5k range worth. They lastly quoted him for a head gasket replacement and he asked me if it's worth it. He plans to buy a new car within the year, likely depending on the life of this one.

So I told him no it's not worth replacing the gasket. I have had two civics of the same gen and dealt with pretty much the same problem in both so I am a good bit familiar. The first one I drove for 2 years that way, carrying a coolant bottle with me, topping off the reservoir (which helped and didn't depending on the situation). I would try all the tricks and bits as I learned how the car would start to overheat and what seemed to make it stop overheating. It was a bit stressful at times, but for the most part, that baby got me point A to point B, 110 miles a day, and lasted 2 years with the usual oil changes and the cost of 2 bottles of coolant over that period of time. And the only thing that killed it was a storm that caused a tree to come down and crush it in the parking lot. So I bought another one just like it, where the problem also exists, but seems significantly better. For the first civic, if I came to question it, many people probably would have agreed I should replace the head gasket or buy a new car. But I bought the thing for 1K and never did any repairs, drove it for over 100K miles (it was at 280K when it got killed) and it worked out pretty good. So the way I see it... I'm glad I didn't replace the head gasket, and I had no plans to, considering the price and age of the car.

In any case, my brother is no dealing with the situation and I started to read a little more into it. Because I'm basically wondering if there's any little tricks or things he could constantly do to keep it going as best as it can in most conditions. Here's some examples of shit I did:

- Stops like red lights seemed to get the temp gauge going up. Once I got rolling, particularly consistently for a little bit, the temps would go back down. So if I knew I'd be sitting for a bit or the temps were already getting a bit high and I had to stop, I'd turn off the car until I had to get rolling again.

- At times, I'd add some coolant to the reservoir. It "seemed" to help quite often, but not always. Couldn't quite understand the full story there. I kind of understand that there's pressure in the system, so the coolant gets pushed to the reservoir, and with a blown head gasket, it has trouble coming back to the radiator. So I don't know why sometimes it would work and others not. I would actually fill past the full line as for some odd reason, it seemed like it was helping. Again, don't quite get it, but it's shit I experimented with because I had no other options, especially out on the roads where I had to pull over.

- I would have thought colder days would help (especially below freezing VS summer days), but it didn't seem to make a difference. In fact, I was often in a shittier situation as I had to idle and defrost my windshield and that was quickly overheat my car.

- I tried avoiding using AC as much as I could, as that seemed to definitely help. I assume since it's not stressing the radiator and water pump as much, that allowed the pressure to be great enough to get the coolant flowing back from the reservoir as it needs? I don't know, it's all speculation for me as I'm absolutely no expert on the whole system. I just get the basics... or so I think.

- I blew the heater on full blast as much as I could in the winter months and ran with the windows open once it got too hot haha. I didn't notice this helping as much but I did it anyway at desperate times.

Overall, I struggled through this shit for a while. There were times where I'd go for a week or a few without any problems. And other days where I'm constantly watching the gauge as it goes up and down as soon as the car gets up to temp. It was hard to find a correlation to when and why the overheating occurred VS when and why it didn't. I always pushed my luck and only pulled over when the gauge would reach the red region. Especially because in many cases, it was in a traffic situation on a highway and I really didn't want to deal with pulling over. But as I said from the start, this baby lived for 2 years, got me plenty of mileage, and cost me practically nothing. Do I want to deal with it again? No. Yet I bought the same beater car for some reason in hopes it would be better. But it is, so I'm not complaining... yet.

Is there anything else aside from the bullshit I did that could help on an everyday basis or in the moment for my brother? Because in his situation, he is definitely moving on from the car sooner or later so replacing the head gasket just doesn't seem worth it IMO. Especially because I went through it with the same car and it all managed to work out. But maybe there was some extra tricks I didn't know?

From searching the web, I'm not seeing any shit that I discussed, which figures. As who the hell on the internet is going to recommend someone to do the shit I did only to keep the car going... I get it. The only crap I'm finding is head gasket sealer, like BlueDevil. I've never used that and I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone just from reading and understanding it a little. Sounds neat and maybe works for some. But just the fact that there's a chance it doesn't work and clogs or fucks something up in the system or the engine and makes things worse, makes me instantly want to turn away from it. Unless enough experienced people on this forum could convince me otherwise, I don't plan on recommending that to him. I'm just more curious if there's anything else out there that I don't know about that could THEORETICALLY help.

Like would adding more or less water to the coolant mix somehow make any change or help the coolant get back to the radiator any easier? Or maybe getting the fans to run non-stop would somehow have any effect? I'm just spitting bullshit here, not offering real solutions necessarily. Just using examples for the type of information or suggestions I'm looking for.

This is a long read. And a long shot. I don't expect much, but felt like writing it up anyway.

On a side note, for learning purposes, I am curious of something. My brother didn't experience any overheating for a little while. Then on the day it rained, he experienced it. Any correlation with rain here? I can't understand that one. And when I search it up on the web, many others have posted similar circumstances, with overheating in the rain. Why?