oldacura

I only have 103,000 miles on my 95. I'm the 3rd owner. I spoke to an Acura dealer technician. He said that he had never seen a BHG on a car that wasn't preceeded by a cooling problem. He pointed out a small leak in my radiator where the throttle cable bracket attaches. I immediately replaced the radiator (with an OEM) and did not re-install the throttle cable bracket.

My temp gage is rock steady at 1 mark below half. No BHG symptoms.

As 91LSMAN said - take care of your cooling system (including preventive maintenance) and you can prevent a BHG.

 

95gs

I think a more appropiate heading might be how many miles on your OEM radiator.
Afterall, its the bad design of the OEM radiator that usual lead to this BGH issue.

My radiator was replaced at approx. 60K when I found a small hair fracture at the top.

Oldacura - my crack was at the throttle cable bracket too. What a coincidence!

jasonzemos

157,000 miles.

Radiator hole at ~75

Broken Waterpump and leakage at ~155,000

Still on stock headgaskets. Mechanic never told me there was oil in the coolant although I see white smoke in the winter... But its white like every other cars right?

I'd also like to know why copper headgaskets wouldn't work on this car, I remember dv8 trying.

Hotstartup

legends suck

SBWooder

251,207!!!!!!!!!!

Mileage isn't relavent to this, just keep the cooling system in check and it should last it better






Chris
frost on ivory

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RangerJoe

when my motor blew up, it had almost 170,000, and when i pulled the heads off, the gaskets were fine.

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Iraqi_Legend

my coupe is at 201,000 it runs real nice no problims so fare with it

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DDoski

LS92Sedan

I just recently bought a 92 LS Sedan, 6th owner 127k and it just started overheating a little one day, guage went up heat went cold for a sec and then it went away, temp went back to operating temp and the heat blew warm, so I did some reading and tried getting all the air out of the system, so far so good it hasn't overheated since. I do know with my experiences with the Legend and various other makes of cars that routine maint. is key, I'm sure I dont need to tell anyone that, always checking the levels of the coolant is a great start and visually inspecting all your hoses. The coolant system of the C32 is very touchy since the passages aren't very large considering the size of the motor. With that said the passages nearest to the top of the combustion chamber are going to get the hottest, low or improperly mixed coolant will boil and anyone who has boiled water knows that when something boils is evaporates and causes excess air into the system, the top of the combustion chamber area is where your headgaskets lie, with aluminum heads they tend to warp way easier than say an iron head when exposed to excess heat making the head seal expand and contract making the seal go bad. Now this is normal wear and tear, eventually the HG will need replacing, but you can prolong the life by keeping the pressure in the system and keeping the air out of the system, flush the system on a regular basis and keep the mixture to a point it wont boil, some people use different mixtures based on the climate they live in and change them seasonally, I would suggest getting into a habit of doing that more often with the C32 based on how prone it is to coolant issues. Hope this is useful to you guys.
Chris

ChrisK

You can say pretty much the same thing with all the other manufactures that use a plastic top tank. Including the Lexus and BMW cars I've own. Seriously, aside from those old school american cast iron blocks and radiators, I don't know of any modern car that uses a plastic tank that doesn't have this same problem. It is not a design flaw IMHO but a marketing ploy by the car companies to build parts that need replacing sooner than later. After all, the money in in the parts and servicing of the cars, not really selling the car itself.

blitz

my legend is at 232000 miles and still running with original headgasket, radiator, even the clutch, TB and WP.

duck

Agree with everyone who says it is related to a cooling system issue. The Acura mechanic who works on my Legend on the side swears by that. I asked him how long these cars go before a HG just needs to be replaced "just because", and he said as long as the car is taken care of, that should never be an issue. He pointed out that when he worked at the Honda dealer my dad worked at, they had a customer with a 1996 Accord that had 1,000,000 (MILLION, yes) miles on it. It never needed it's HG replaced, and he says the same principles applied to those engines as to the Acura 3.2 liter engines...Don't overheat them!

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oldacura

Many people here bash the OEM radiator design as "cheap". Many think that replacing it with an all metal one is better. I'm sure the reason that Acura uses an aluminum radiator is because the engine is aluminum and they want to avoid galvanic corrosion that would result from using dissimilar metals (like a copper/brass radiator). The reason the radiators have plastic tanks is that the thin aluminum cannot be welded and aluminum cannot be soldered like brass/copper. The only solution is to crimp a plastic tank on the top & bottom. Why would they design a $40,000 car and cheap out on the radiator (especially when you can buy an aftermarket all metal radiator for $120)?

In my opinion, when you change from the OEM aluminum/plastic radiator to a copper/brass one, you are trading one problem for another.

phan_nam420

i got 169,420k miles !

95gs

ChrisK and others:
In my case it was a hair fracture at the throttle hose bracket on the radiator. Was this the same for other plastic radiator on the other cars you've mentioned?

Wondered if they beef up the junction if that may solved all ills?

A-P Legend

To help with internal corrosion issues (possibly due to metal radiator), consider one of these. http://www.radcapproducts.com

I tried one and i was suprised to find that it did indeed work well. When it came time to change the coolant/radiator cap in my RX7, i pulled out the sacrificial anode and found it to be about 35% gone. Simple idea that helps keep corrosion away.

Too bad there isnt an all-aluminum radiator made for the legend (like koyo or fluidyne). Would be a great product to have on our cars. After all, the only real problem they have is overheating!

G

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