I have a 1992 honda accord and i think i have a blown head gasket. And I have water getting into my master cylinder or spark plug #1. What would you recommend I do? Try and fix it or get a new motor or vehicle?
And I have water getting into my master cylinder or spark plug #1.
Those are completely separate systems. Brakes use DOT 3 or whatever your owner's manual says. If there's coolant in your antifreeze, you probably have a head gasket leak. You can verify this with a head gasket tester. Run the vehicle, once it's at operating temperature, start sucking air into the device, if it turns from blue to yellow, your head gasket is leaking. Before you start your car, take a couple inches out of your radiator and leave the cap off. You can rent them at AutoZone for free.
If you can do the work yourself it may be worth a shot. The cost of head gasket replacement is mostly labor, the gasket itself is not expensive. However if you need to pay a shop to do the work it would cost more than a three-decade-old Accord is worth.
Am unhappy to correct you, but the problem is not 'coolant in the antifreeze' but exhaust gases in the cooling system.
Then you can use the described tester which detects carbondioxid in the expansion bottle of the cooling system by changing colour of the testing-liquid from blue to yellow.
I think it's best when TS describes his problem more accurately..
Is there coolant entering cylinder no. 1 and is coming out of the sparkplug hole of that cylinder (when the plug is removed)??
I guess, changing the head-gasket in diy is not too difficult, but you will need a torque-wrench and some nuts, and probably the head must be scimmed for planeness.
I could be totally wrong here, but I remember a mechanic advising against skimming the engine as it changes the tolerances of the timing. E.g. the chain/belt is now looser as the block and head are closer together. This was mostly on modern engines.
But that was ages ago, and I'm not a mechanic, so I could be way off and talking about something else.
It's entering number one and coming out when the spark plug is removed. I checked for milk or white smoke haven't noticed any yet. But the coolant is definitely getting into cylinder 1 when the spark plug is removed
When the stuff that is blasted out of the plug-opening has an 'watery-aspect' (and not 'oily' too), in my vision, this would point to a connection in the headgasket between cylinder-1 bore and a local coolant (water) channel.
Maybe you could double-check by -after blocking the crankshaft with cylinder-1 in TDC (all valves for that cylinder closed)-, applying compressed air to cylinder-1 (using an adapter made from an old sparkplug and an airconnecter nipple).
After removing the expansion-bottle-cap you should see air bubbling up in that bottle.
As a bottle of Bar-Leak will not help on your problem, taking off the head will sadly reveal all.
May the Guru's assist.. 😪