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I have a 1998 Honda Accord LX 4 cylinder. At 208K miles I lost compression in cylinder 2. After the usual checks for a leaking head gasket, etc. I pulled the head and thought I had what looked like a chipped exhaust valve. I replaced both exhaust valves in cylinder 2 and lapped all the valves in the head before reassembly. I sent the fuel injectors off to be professionally cleaned and they reported no problems with them once cleaned. Car ran fine for another 60K miles and I now have exactly the same dead cylinder 2. Pulled the head again and I now know that it’s a burned valve – not a chip. That’s what it was the 1st time also. Cylinder 2 is running really hot and the plug is very white. The other cylinders look fairly carboned up like the computer was trying to enrich all cylinders to help #2. The car burns oil (270K miles are on it now) but the compression in each cylinder wasn’t bad before the failure – around 175 each. EGR check engine light has been on for quite a while but don’t know why that would affect just one cylinder like this. Any suggestions?
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Lapping in a valve is not the same as having the seats ground and the seat to valve angles perfectly matched and set. If there was even a slight imperfection on the valve seat it would leak a little compression by until the valve burned. The failure in the pic is called “guttering” and is caused by hot exhaust leaking by.
Is it an egr flow code? If so the egr port for that cylinder may be plugged. You may have high EGT temps in that cylinder which could burn the valve. Did you adjust the valves to spec after the head job?
The code is P0401. I only see the one EGR port with the head off the car. I know ETCG has a video on cleaning the EGR ports on the Honda Accord but he shows a different 4-cyl. model. In his video he moves the fuel rail out of the way and it exposes a plate. He removes the plate and can then access 4 ports. My 98 4 cylinder has no such arrangement. Just the one port at the distributor end of the intake manifold. How would that one plugged port affect only cylinder 2? Like I said, the other 3 cylinders are carboned up quite a bit like the computer was trying to compensate for the one lean cylinder. I did adjust the valves after reassembly (at 208K miles) the last time and again 3K miles after (so 211K). Figured the lapping of the valves may result in a need for an early adjustment. Nothing was out of spec though at 211K.
It’s somewhat helpful but it covers the V-six which has a completely different intake manifold from my 4. Thank you though.
[quote=”KentDowns” post=95607]It’s somewhat helpful but it covers the V-six which has a completely different intake manifold from my 4. Thank you though.[/quote]
The first part is for the v6.But further down is the procedure for
the 4 cylinder p0401 diagnoses. see if this helps.http://www.justanswer.com/honda/5wgc7-honda-accord-hi-tim-back-new-question-996-honda.html
Ah, yes. Sorry I missed that. Unfortunately, the diagram is for a 1996 Accord which has a different engine from my 2.3L 4-cylinder 1998 model.
[b]Customer Question
Hi Tim Im back with a new question. 1996 Honda Accord 2.2 with a P0401 code. Can you lead me to a fix . Thanks Mike[/b]
The diagram shows there is an EGR chamber lying on top of the manifold, below the fuel rail. My 1998 engine has no such EGR chamber. ETCG has a video on cleaning the EGR passages on the Accord and he’s obviously using the 1996 engine. Cleaning the EGR passages on this engine is quite easy and straightforward. I’ll keep looking!
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