Hey guys,
​​​​​​Im the 2nd owner of MY00 for about5 years now. Going on about 115k miles, just recently my alternator crapped out on me while I was doing 70mph on the highway. It didn't show any signs of going bad prior to that... When it died, basically all the lights in the cabin flickered and the engine kinda "chugged" or "bogged", idk the correct term but it's was put-putting for a second...

Shortly after replacing my alternator it ran for a month or soso wi no issues, until I got a CEL for a bad cat converter. Just put the Berk HFC in last week and cleared the light...

After I reset my idle I notice a fair amount of coolant under my hood. Upon inspection I noticed the hairline crack where we all get em in this OEM radiator...

I don't track my car at all and I don't drive it heavily, it's not even my DD, I've put like 2k miles a year in it since I had it lol... Thanks to this thread I think I settled my debate of weather to get an aluminum or the OE(M).

Sorry for the long post but do you guys think that my alternator going out and the vibration of the motor when I chugged for a second caused my radiator to crack? and 2ndly would a crack in the radiator cause my cat to get coated in oil/coolant causing it to go bad? I'm just trying to figure out what else could have gone wrong from that alternator moment. Everything else seems fine.

You guys are great. Thanks for any comments!

 

The radiator is not hard mounted to the engine (only connected by hoses) so I doubt the movement of the engine caused it. Likely just happened close to the same time by coincidence. If it is a hairline crack along the top tank, that is the typical failure point on this style of radiator.

Nothing about the radiator is going to allow anything to get through the cat. I mean, if you severely overheated it and cracked a head you could get water in the cylinders and steam out the exhaust, but it sounds like you did not experience overheating. Even then I do not see that killing the cat.

Are you sure the CAT was bad or was it just the sensor? Which code was it specifically? I mean, if the light stayed off then the CAT was probably it but good to know.

 

I got the p0420 code. Im pretty sure it was the cat cause the honeycomb in it was destroyed and it rattled after I installed the alternator. Luckily it did not over heat at all, I was just concerned that maybe my car misfired while bogging down and messed up the fuel ratio and everything else with it.

Sounds like good news and hopefully the radiator is the last of my problems. Only thing else I want to do is pull my spark plugs and see what they look like. Hopefully there isn't a pool of coolant/oil in there. I'll probably recheck the valve clearance as well.

 

can we talk about your block and or head? anything rebuilt?

 

my koyo oe replacement lasted longer than my original radiator. on my 2nd koyo oe now (3rd radiator).

 

He said it was original...which isn't surprising. Its a Honda. So 370K miles isn't amazing. You don't have to do anything special for a semi-modern engine to last that long.

But driving and keeping a car that many miles is pretty cool.

 

yea, i was debating whether to hold off on asking and finishing reading the thread. but felt lazy and just replied. then kept reading and saw his post.

i'm also surprised that the head was never opened up. valves, valve guides, valve seals holding up for that long.

 

Mine went. Her 20th Birthday is in about 20 days from now. Exact same issue as other users. below filler neck towards the middle stress crack opened up on the vertical side facing the engine. Guess I need to add this to the checklist of things to look at when reviewing people's cars! Didn't know it was that prevalent of an issue.

Going to go with the KOYO “OE” style radiator.

 

I'm running a Koyo with mishimoto radiator hose very happy with it; no leaks 0 issues cools great. Looks great. Thicker then OEM never seen over 3 bars. It's quality for sure. I swapped it at 85k just cuz i wanted an upgrade.
I would pick this over OEM just due to looks, larger rad and better cooling then OEM but I also love anything overkill

 

Bought the Koyo off E-Bay. It came out of one of the 6 distribution facilities, came quickly and very well packed!

Went with the "OEM STYLE" vs the full aluminum version. Let me tell you this thing is so exacting to the original OEM it's so close it's down to the 100th of an inch! Only one area that I think was part of the mold that was different. Other than that PERFECT!

Now onto the next project of re-doing my amplifiers setup.