Well I have had the turbo on for around 4000 miles and NONE of them were driven hard. My high boost setting is at 12psi. I drove home from the airport about 80 miles just fine and the next morning I tried starting the car and it wouldn't start. I swapped out the plugs and it fired up I allowed it to idle for awhile when I noticed the temp gauge at 4 bars and was wondering why the fans didn't kick on. It then went to 5 bars and I immediately shut the car off. I then looked and sure enough coolant was more than a gallon low but there was still coolant in the overflow. I am sure the car never went over 5 bars and even then it was for a very brief period of time. The whole ride home from the airport was a consistant 3 bars because I am anal and always check the gauges often while driving. My main question is could it have damaged anything else?? I understand that the head may be warped or piston rings could be in trouble but what is the likliness of this?? I had the HG installed at the dealership alongwith the arp studs so I hope to just purchase the inlinepro HG and go back to stock head bolts for the fix. I just hope nothing else serious happened during the low coolant phase.

 

Do you have coolant in the oil? Is the engine leaking coolant on the outside of the block? Do you smell coolant? Maybe the installer didn't burp the coolant system. And if the installer torqued the ARP studs the same as the factory head bolts there is a good possibility that head gasket was crushed beyond its ability to seal.

 

I overheated my engine twice because of carelessly not watching my temps gauge more often. Car still runs fine a year later. However, I did not see any signs of coolant in my oil.

Since the fix I been fine running w/ stock studs and copper spray.

 

The oil cap has the mayonnaise like symptoms although the dipstick isn't that bad yet. The radiator is holding good pressure. I did see some fluid coming out of the exhaust manifold onto the hot side of the turbo. It was very little and evaporated fairly quickly but there is also some oil on the top after it has cooled.

 

I know that our installer definitely follows torque instructions perfectly. He did my ARP studs (with inline gasket) to recommended spec with the moly lube. He also flushed the coolant system on mine. I would suspect he did the same with yours - it might just be the headgasket but who knows. Man... the both of us have had so many problems. I haven't driven my car in 6 weeks but I hope to have it ready to drive on Thursday.

 

You didn't overheat your engine, your engine overheated. Overheating your engine has nothing to do with what you, the driver do, unless you are playing around with variables yourself with your EMS and not having a way to check their results.

To put it simply: your car should NEVER overheat with a good tune, driving as hard as you want, your car simply shouldn't overheat, if it does, your tune is too aggressive and needs to be toned down or just changed period. I was tuned by IP's tuner and I'm boosting my car daily in these 90-97deg. temps in FL with heat indexes of over 105, and my car never overheats, it gets really ****ing hot, but it never overheats. IMO, you need to retune if you are experiencing overheating issues with your setup that occur b/c you don't 'watch your temp guage'.

 

sounds fishy that you both have the same installer and are having issues

 

I have been through three HG issues.

In the process of tearing down completly.

After my first tune I blew a cometic HG with ARP studs. All four cylnders.
Got about 2500 miles out of that.

Second was with a stock HG with ARP studs, it blew in the middle, 2,3.
Got 2700 out of that one.

Third, not even 300 miles. with stock HG and ARP studs. Blew the number one cylnder and the radi cap blew off.

Three tunes by three different tuners.

So believe me, I feel for yah. Now that I got the whole motor out, tearing down the bottom end tonight, and sending everything out to have checked. At least I have a whole bunch of spare parts to build another engine.

I hope you find a solution. If I find one, I will let you know as well.

 

Sounds like its the headstuds for you

 

I actually had the Honda dealership install my 3mm headgasket and ARP studs while they were fixing my engine due to a money shift, so that excludes afwjustin and my installers issue. Which may also be the reason that the headgasket went they follow there instructions and now that I am going to do it myself I will take all of the input from you guys and implement it on my install. I think that I am going to go with venomousS's 2mm and copper spray technique and see how that works for me. I don't plan on going over 16psi or 400whp so it should be just fine. We shall see.