two years 20k miles, 12 + track days still good, knock on wood

 

Also, just to be clear, I've never had one of these actually leak (vacuum or coolant) that I've installed. On the first few the bolts did loosen, but after loctite they never loosened or had an issue. Most of my customers are repeat so most of these I have kept up with over the years.

The very first one I installed IIRC was on my own car, which I still keep up w/the owner, the gasket has something like 50k mi on it with about 8 of those doing several track/autox events per year. No issues.

FWIW I always modify the forward lower manifold bracket so that it remains in place and functional.

 

i am not going to replace my IMG like a wear n tear item.

NO f-ing way.

that's $600 labor, market rate...of if i do it on my own...waaaaaaay too much time.

i'm going to pay someone to take it off and slap on an oem gasket...maybe in a few more years.

 

DAYUMN!!! Does your shop charge $200 per hour?!?

 

Thanks for your input marcucci. Since it's easier to access the gasket on my '08, I may check mine at the end of this year to see how it's holding up.

 

WRT to the market rate, $600 would be steep but probably market for $100/hr incl coolant and gasket and maybe a tech taking an hour longer than he should. The entire job is doable in ~4 hours unless you are a complete newbie to IM removal on the S. I can do these in about 2 hours now without the coolant bleed.

Keep in mind that most Honda dealers charge $90+ for labor now and IIRC their coolant retails at something retarded like $16/gallon and they will need 2 gals.

I can see most owners not wanting to replace it like a wear item, but it is what it is. I do think Hondata should provide a warning to some extent to the longetivity. I don't think it's a reason to go ahead and yank it off or freak out, any leak/issue should show up as a minor nuisance issue before it becomes major.

 

sorry guys, i mistakenly used the price to remove the headgasket...i associated the IMG with removing head gasket.

i supposed labor would be about $250-350. which is still a lot.

let's just say if i knew beforehand that the hondata img should be treated like a wear and tear item, i would not have installed it.

 

Easy solution....Don't use one. I had one and ran it for 1 track day then removed it. The coolant opening was ovaled and the side that mounted against the head looked a lot like the blue one on the first page. I think I just threw it out but if I didn't I'll take photos...

-Rob

 

Wow- I've never seen one that bad in that short of time. I've actually never seen one as bad as the pics posted here, and I've seen some abused ones.

FWIW I overtorque the bolts/nuts which probably reduces creepage some due to the additional clamping force. But YMMV.

 

After about 35-40K miles with my Hondata gasket in an '08 AP2, it failed as shown in this thread. Fortunately, it was a slow failure that caused no damage to the motor. However, after looking at the failure, I believe it really can't be blamed completely on the gasket. I suspect that the issue is NOT caused by high heat as much as high coolant pressure. I run a J's high pressure radiator cap, which is rated to tripple the pressure differential between the inside of the cooling system vs. the outside. I believe that if I would have used the stock radiator cap, which maintains a peak pressure only slightly above 1 atmosphere (ie. practically nothing), it would have lasted much, much longer.

So I'm curious, of the guys who had similar failures, how many were using the OEM radiator cap?