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I decided to put the Balancer belt on. Once I got the wheel and crank pulley off I noticed that the timing belt was pretty tight. Again that may have been my issue I loosened it a bit(Manual Tensioner) and started the car and it felt quite a bit smoother. I have already been thru this once so I decided I would just go for it an install the belt. I also removed my energy inserts from the front mount. Got it back together and it feels pretty smooth, actually... soo smooth that now I hear all of the other little creaks and ticks in the suspension. I'm going to drive as is for a bit and see how things feel, I will eventually get the car tuned and I may remove the belt before I go in.
I had some success with the tune, I got the idle better and got the air fuel at idle in the 13 range. I was driving the car for a few days and it was so much smoother. Then the other day I started it up and the car was idling back in the 10 range and was not smooth. I tried a new rom with no success. I swapped the MAP and no change. I was driving today and she was running a bit rough, I was on the freeway and she pretty much cut out on me. I pulled over and she stalled. I fiddled with the chip a bit to make sure it was tight and checked under the hood and everything looked good. I started it back up and it was fine, started driving on some side streets and after about 10 mins same thing. Shut the car off and back on and it was good again... drove further and again. This time it threw a code 4. I never really did figure out the code 4 issue. I pulled off the dist cap and cleaned the connectors, checked the wires, lost the spring on the coil, I lucked out and somehow had another one in my center console. I jiggled all of the wires and put it back together and bam, no code and my fuel ratio was decent again....
I'm not sure what's going on, I either have a bad sensor or loose wire somewhere. I'm thinking about ordering a new dist and if I still have an issue after that ill need to move ahead on my new wiring harness. Been working on other things and have not gotten back to that project.
I guess I have not posted to this in a while. I had a decent tune running in the car and it was running great. I decided I wanted to build my new wiring harness and go for a moderate tucked look as well. I started off really strong in December, I bought a prelude harness and dissected that for the wires and plugs. I needed a few additional connectors so I also pulled apart another D16 Harness I had laying around. I plan to get rid of all of the Y's in the wiring for the grounds and bring them all back to a distribution block near the ECU so I can run each sensor on its own individual wrapped wires back to the ECU. Well I planned to remove the connectors between the engine harness and ECU harness but that just turned into too much of a headache. I also went to the pick your part and pulled an ECU side harness as well but honestly there are way too many connections to the under dash harness. I got a little overwhelmed with Christmas and such so it took me a while to get back to the project. I pulled the old harness at that time so I could use it as a comparison so the car has been stuck in the garage since then
I finally dove back into it yesterday and made some progress. I pulled most of the AC/Heater unit out so I could access under the dash area. I pulled all of the wiring through the firewall. I will just connect my new harness on the other side of the firewall leaving the connectors. I'm not sure what I want to do about the engine bay fuse box, maybe I will relocate it to the glove box or something, I'm not sure.
I had plans to remove the ABS Pump and all of the lines that to go to that but it looks like a bigger project than planned, to remove the ABS I will need to run new hard lines which is going to be a pain. If I happen to run across a non ABS accord at the junk yard ill most likely pull the lines and the 40/40 valve. I was checking to see if I could just go braided from the valve all the way to the calipers but that didn't see to be in the cards either. Just a FYI, my ABS has never worked the pump would run like crazy and it was throwing a hand full of codes. I currently have no computer or fuse box, I just want it gone
I also started another project replacing the Clutch Master Cyl with one from an AP1. I bought the kit with the Braided line and hopefully that goes in easily. I replaced both the Slave and master not too long ago but every once in a while the pedal gets stuck to the floor, its really annoying and the pedal is really light. The line between the master and res tends to be an issue and I couldn't really find a good replacement. I figured the AP1 unit would be an upgrade. We will see, I pulled the master and the lines on the transmission side out yesterday, I'm not sure about the hard line on the firewall, I may just leave it until next time I remove the engine. I can have OCD about that kind of thing so I'm not sure I will be able to leave it.
Still been pretty lazy about completing this but I made some big progress yesterday. My hands and fingers are chewed up after this but I'm pretty proud of my work. Wires have been extended where needed and each plug individually wrapped. I still have a ways to go but here is what I have done at the moment. I'm starting to think that 600$ for a tuck harness isn't soo expensive. haha.
Harness is getting close to being completed, I took this pic yesterday, I have all of connectors pinned and wrapped. I extended the injector yellow wires and moved the distribution block to where it will sit inside the firewall. I also did the same with the green wires that are merged all thru the harness, instead of them being tied in at random points in the harness I used another distribution block and will connect it near the other main harness plugs. I'm working on the same thing for the grounds as well, to be safe I'm going to just run all 4 wires from the engine ground and connect them to the distribution block where everything else will tie in, most likely 1 wire would be enough but it wont hurt to run all 4.
I am also going to pull the connectors on the drivers side back through the firewall and connect them under the dash near the ECU, I prefer that the whole engine harness comes thru and connects at the same spot to keep things simple. Most likely ill just extend the adapter I created before so I don't have to modify the actual under dash harness.
I was a little unsure how I was going to run the distributor wires, I currently have both the OBD1 2 plug setup wrapped and ready to go but I also wired the 2 additional wires to the OBD1 connector in case I want to eliminate the extra connector as I did before. That just leaves me with one additional wire for the tach that I have not included in the harness, well I have a wire connected currently but I'm not sure how I am going to run it, maybe ill just be smart and go back to the 2 plug setup, I have some OBD2 plugs laying around as well with 10 wires, that makes the most sense but it would take a bit of work to get set up.
Either way..im close, I kind of wish I had not started the additional projects including the new AP1 clutch master and attempting to remove the ABS but ill just have to button those up as well.
I was honestly considering swapping the h23 into my civic but I have done a ton of suspension work on the accord and I don't want to start over. Maybe ill look for a clean Accord shell to swap things into, or a prelude, I think all of my mods will work in a prelude as well. lol
Well... I picked up a 97 prelude for $500 this morning. I'm thinking ill pull everything I can off the Accord and stuff it in the Prelude and get rid of the Accord. I'm struggling with this decision. I'm kind of attached to the Accord but the Prelude it s bit nicer. The prelude is an Auto so I want to pull the engine and trans from the Accord and put it in the Prelude, I think the SKunk 2 suspension will swap over as well. The only thing I cant really remove is the new tint. Its a tough decision...
I decided to sell the prelude and keep the accord. I installed the S2k AP1 clutch master. I did have an issue with the install. I compared the master and it looked good using the spacer I got with it. But after the install it was waay too short. I removed the adapter and still too short. The pedal was almost on the floor with the master all the way out. I did think about swapping the rod over from the old one I had but I did not want to modify it. I went ahead and used a coupler and a bolt to extend the rod. So far it looks like I have good motion and it should be good to go. I also added the braided line to the master so hopefully that will improve things as well. We will see.(just a note, I may have been comparing it with a civic master, its been a while since I took it apart. It would be a perfect fit in a civic.
I started installing the new wire harness. I'm starting to question my decision to wrap it in blue. Its going to get dirty fast. I just need to jack up the car and route some of the plugs behind the manifold. it should be pretty clean when finished. I also pulled the plugs thru the firewall on the driver side and I will create extensions from those plugs to the corresponding plugs on the passenger side. I will post some pics soon. I really need to get this car running since I need to get the prelude hood in the garage so I can paint it. I think ill just throw the fuse box on the passenger floor for the moment until I figure out where am going to mount it.
I'm still missing the ECT plug, I'm not too sure what I was thinking, I may have just wired the coolant temp sensor wire in that location, ill have to track it down. I still need to add a grommet to the firewall and zip tie the wires together to bundle them. Wires are decently tucked Ill put the cover back on the stock header eventually. Unless I can find a 4-2-1 header that I can use the stock downpipe on I may just leave it stock. injector wires are tucked cleared some additional space above the fuel rail. AP1 clutch cyl and line. There are a few wires that need to be cleaned up still but its getting close Slave cyl with new line.
The engine bay still needs to be painted and detailed. I honestly considered pulling the motor and painting the engine bay but I would end up with the car not running for another 6 months. lol. Its been in the garage for 4 months already for a quick wire harness build. That didn't exactly happen quickly. I just need to get this back on the road so I can use the garage for my other projects. Plus it would be nice to drive my car with the good tires/radio/gauges/engine/tint/suspension. It was running good before I pulled out the harness. Sometimes I just don't know what I am thinking.
Still missing 2 plugs, I'm seriously procrastinating at finishing this up. I just need to add the coolant temp switch on the thermostat and intake temp sensor on the manifold. I'm not sure how I managed to leave them out. I planned to leave the front temp sensor disconnected since I don't think the ECU is using it.
I did notice that the wires for coolant temp sensor and the ground for the tps were in the same location, I think that's why I had issues with my TPS after the swap, ill need to repin that connector.
I also need to add fluid for the clutch and get that bled, ill be really disappointed if the master does not work well after all of the work.
I need to rewire my gauges as well, the original wiring was pretty crappy and electrical taped up, and I keep forgetting I need to make the adapters for the driver side harness plugs... why oh why did I create soo much work for myself. lol.
I got the Fan Switch and AIT sensor wired up and ready to go. I still have a few issues to work through. First issue is that my alternator positive wire does not reach all the way into the cabin, actually it doesn't even reach all the way to the original fuse box location... I'm not sure how that happened. Ill have to just extend it for now, most likely ill have to create a new line for this but since everything is now modular its not a big deal. I also don't think my positive battery lead will make it to the new fuse box location. If I have to make a new positive battery lead I might as well move forward and relocate the battery to the trunk, I did pick up a battery box at Walmart for 6$ the other day in clearance so maybe ill just use that. lol.
I lengthened the old 8 pin harness I used before. I removed the old twist and heat shrink connections I did before and soldered them so I know it will be reliable(I never had any issue with the old connections but solder connections are the way to go), I think the adapter is about 6ft long now so plenty of room to move things around. This is to run the Driver side Harnesses under the dash so they connect on the passenger side instead of having sub harnesses on both sides of the engine bay. I need to create the 12pin? adapter now, I had to order some wire and heat wrap connectors since I used all of my wire up with the last adapter.
My harness did end up getting a little messy under the dash, not the individual wires so much but just the bundles, since I connected them to the engine and pushed them through they ended overlapping in odd ways, next time I pull the engine I can clean that up a bit but for now no big deal.
I am pretty unhappy with the stock wiring under the dash, I'm going to stop myself from messing with it now but I'm guessing sometime in the future, unless I change to a new shell I will end up doing a similar harness under the dash (because Racecar, errr... Daily driver... ummm... wtf am I doing?) Well at least the engine bay harness is clean and if I want to in the future I can pretty easily change it over to OBD2. I would love to end up with a nice OBD2 connector for the engine but I guess that's a bit silly since ill always be using a OBD1 ECU. I want to separate the engine harness completely from the dash harness so it a bit simpler.(sigh... #OCD the struggle is real)
ok #GetThisDamnCarOutOfMyGarage
1.12Pin 6th Harness extension.
2. Lengthen Alternator positive wire
3.New positive Battery lead to fusebox
4.Connect fusebox/ECU and leave them on the passenger floor for now
5. Bleed clutch
6.Charge battery
7. Install 7th?8th? gen leather Civic seats(hopefully they fit without modifying the rails. My seats are complete garbage well beyond even repairing. The didn't line up with the 5th gen prelude stock mounting holes so I guess we will find out. The civic rails may be skinnier.
8. troubleshoot 6 different cell codes that I'm sure to get once I power it up.
Just a note, between this project I'm working on 3 other cars as well so that's why my focus is....... yea
99 Civic EX Sedan B20 Swapped. New rear Subframe brace, lower control arms, new rotors, pads, hubcentric rings, rim center caps, cap/rotor/plugs/ coil fuel filter, tires, new exhaust( just never ends)
98 Civic Ex Stock engine just changed to ARP Headstuds and Cometic gasket after my 8$ ebay head gasket failed immediately, still need to wire up my new fogs, ported polished head, replaced ever sensor including dist. new lock actuators, alarm system driver window. lol
97 Prelude Cap/rotor/plugs/wires Cleaned EGR/IACV. New Plug cover, h22 valve cover wire harness cover, powersteering bolts stripped and needed replacing, alternator belt rubbing on the timing cover fixed, new belts, new speakers, new speaker covers, new hood, still painting. Fenders and roof still need painted due to sun damage, driver door wiring harness needs to be repaired.
And keeping all 4 registered/smogged/insured.
The Accord honestly the least valuable car has the most expensive parts. lol. The Accord is my project, the 98 Civic and 97 Prelude are Daily drivers/For sale flips. The 99 Civic is my wifes car.
Well I'm slacking again, I'm soo close but just cant seem to reach the finish line. I got my wire and supplies to build the last adapter but I just have not gotten around to it.
I have been working on the paint on the Prelude, its amazing on the damage trying to rattle can a hood will do to your hands, its the next day and my hands are still shaky. I need to wet sand the hood today and see the finished product, its hard to tell before the wetsand how it turned out. I will need to pull the fenders and paint them but it would be nice to have my garage to use, I was fighting with everything falling in my paint as I was painting. I guess I need to get the accord running so I can get it out of the garage. Right back to where I have been all year. lol
I went to the Pick your part picking up some 5 speed swap parts and there was a Acura CL sitting there. I took a look and the rear seats, rear panels and door panels were perfect. I believe they are a direct fit on the Accord so I grabbed them. I'm excited to get them installed and Civic Seats. Hoepfully everything bolts up. The only problem is that I still didn't finish the wire harness. What a pain, I guess since I cant work on the prelude ill spend some time getting the final adapter created for the accord.
The interior was really going to **** so I'm excited to get this stuff swapped. Honesty I think the only think making me not like the accord at the moment is the interior and engine bay paint, if I sort those out I think ill be much happier with the car.
I took the time, like 4 hours to build the additional extension I needed. My hands are raw from wiring but its finally done. Both extension harnesses so that the engine wire harness only enters the firewall on one side.
I could have removed some of the additional wrap material but honestly... its close enough and it will be under the dash anyway.
Hey progress is progress. I am just trying to complete a simple motor swap I started on my Accord overt 3 years ago. And I still have not completed it.
Do you think not having your balance shaft belt in actually was what caused you issues, or was it some of your other issues? I am torn on leaving the belt off on my F23...
Forgive me if I missed it, but was your car originally Vtec? I noticed you said you had a Phearable ecu. I have been thinking about getting an ecu from them instead of trying to find the exact used ECU and hoping it isn't toast.
Where are you located at Jolly?
I have done about 15 swaps now so I'm getting pretty good at it.
Well I think my timing belt was too tight, I honestly think that's where my vibration was coming from. I can tell you that you definitely get more vibration without the belt being installed. its generally only at certain RPMs that you feel it. Yes my car was Vtec but honestly that makes little difference.
For the ECU I used the old one from my wife's civic and sent it out to be chipped. Its a P28 which will support pretty much anything you want to do once chipped.
I am swapping from a non Vtec f22 to an f23a. For the time being I am probably just going to use a shift light to operate the Vtec for now. I saw phearable can do a Vtec upgrade etc on my ecu so I figured that is what I will eventually do. I just need the car on the road asap and I will sort out ecu issues later. I have done many engine swaps, but mostly just straight up replacements. I plan on keeping this car for a long time so I have gotten a little but ocd about everything. I feel your pain on little details driving you crazy. My car is white and will always be, so I got a wild hair to get some cleaning brushes and degreaser and have literally beer scrubbing every inch of the engine bay. It wasn't that bad, considering 300k miles and 13 years, but once I started scrubbing I couldn't stop. I haven't even entertained a wire tuck, I would never finish the car then! Good luck on the completion of your ventures!
I would say the easiest thing to do is just grab a P28 and get it chipped. You can buy a Burn2 chip programmer $89.99 and from there you can download basemaps for whatever engine you want and use Crome to burn it. The P28 will pretty much work with everything.
I just checked out your thread. Sort of an odd choice for an engine swap. All of the problems of an H swap and none of the power. lol. I was running a F23 Manifold before I did my swap so I had to install the Rosko adapter as well, actually its been sitting on my desk in front of me since I did my H-Swap.
Vtec wiring is easy. I would assume all of the F23's are OBD2. What distributor do the F23's use? The f22b1's use that crappy tec distributor, or was it the hitachi. I cant remember, which one is the funny one. The F22b2's use the basic one that all of the other Honda's use. If its the same as the F22b1 you should be able to use a F22b1 ECU and it would run ok. Hit me up if you hit a snag.
I just read the thread that Aradin replied to, I think he covered everything.
Money was a big deciding factor. The JDM F23A was cheaper than a head gasket set and head bolts. I actually bought 2 of the motors when I made the purchase and have been doing some light reading on building a G23. I may do that with the spare motor if I don't just sell it to someone.
Finally pulled the accord out of the garage. Both adapter harnesses are installed. I think all I need to do is figure out how I had those 2 additional wires wired for the distributor. I also need to get my battery situation sorted. With the fuse box relocated under the dash the Alternator and my 0 gauge power wires will not reach. I went ahead and moved my battery to the trunk(I picked up a battery tray at Walmart for like 2$ a while back so ill use that for now. I ordered 25ft of 2Gauge red and black wire and the connectors so I can rewire things. Hopefully that's enough, if not ill just order some more. I also removed the rear interior and mocked up the Acura TL(CL?) interior and it looks pretty good. The Rear side inserts are exact and the rear seat back seems to sit perfectly. The bottom seat I'm pretty sure was identical so it looks good but there is a bit of a gap between the bottom and seat back, I may just need to push the back down a bit more, but overall. Huge improvement. My rear seat bottoms were ripped to crap from the sun/age and my kids. The door inserts are great as well. I had to swap the top half from my accord panels since the handle is different, I'm sure if the fancy wood grain molding was not broken I could have rigged it up to work but with the accord top half its perfect, it also keeps the 2 tone so I'm happy about that as well.
The seats I picked up... nope the rails don't line up, I'm disappointed but not heartbroken about it. I need to test fit the prelude seats from my prelude(duhh I guess) and make sure they fit. I will be picking up some black stock 5th gen seats, if they fit in the accord that's cool and if not... Ill just swap the interior in the prelude to all black.
When I relocated the battery and removed the stock battery tray I lost the mount for the reservoir.(well not lost but its part of the tray) So I went ahead and ordered a generic blue aluminum canister and ill just mount that up instead, should look a little better than the old crusty one anyway.
When I was jacking up the car a while back to install the new harness I accidentally slipped off the lower member and the jack hit on the radiator and radiator support. The top of the radiator support was bent in a few spots and I figured it would just need a little pounding to get back in place. Well I finally got the car out and needed to close the hood, I tried to adjust it but couldn't get things to line up. When I inspected the latch it was broken. I went ahead and ordered a replacement latch, mine was a turd anyway.
I think that's about it. Ill take some pics when I get things cleaned up a bit. It been a while since I have really seen the car, its actually pretty cool looking. I'm in love with my rims again. I also still hate the internal wiring... I really want to rip it apart. Ill hold off until I get it running again
I did pick up the seats yesterday, started modifying the driver side to fit the accord rail. I would have preferred to use the prelude rail since it sits lower but since I don't want to make a bunch of adapters this worked out better. The setup is similar as far as mounting to the seat and seat back. I ended up widening the 2 front holes since they needed to be a bigger diameter. The middle holes did not line up, technically its the rear bolt for the bottom of the seat. I drilled new holes for that bolt. On the left side of the seat back only one hole lined up so I had to drill an additional hole and add nut to the back side. I wanted to test fit it last night but it was dark already and I forgot to install the wire that attaches the 2 rails. I should have that completed today. I can always install the prelude rails back on since only 1 hole was drilled in the seat to adapt the Accord bracket. I did end up breaking the lever for the seat bottom tilt because I tried to remove it without removing the clip, I did not notice the clip.
I did receive everything I need to do the wiring for the battery relocation and the overflow as well so I am very close to completing this.
Well Plan A on the seats is a failure. Yes I was able to mount them cleanly but the seat angle is poor. The seat locks laying waaay too far back for me to drive. The notches are different on the prelude bracket. I was also a bit concerned that the seat did not slide back as far as before, im not exactly sure why. I guess plan B is to grind off the Rivets on the prelude rails and move the mounts to the needed locations. I may only need to do the rear and not touch the front but I may need to make some adjustments because the prelude fronts are not as wide. Its too hot now for me to do any grinding so this may have to wait a few days. I just bought a new cut off wheel so I guess it will get its test run on this.
Here are some Misc Pics of the project. I did get the Prelude seat mounted for the driver side. I ended up modifying 3 out f 4 of the mounts. Eventually I will get them welded up just for some additional safety but honestly its super solid. I ended up buying a shop vac so I could clean the car out, it was pretty dirty. I pulled the center console apart to try to get things lined up a little better but did not have a whole lot of success. Its better but things still don't line up perfectly. I guess I should just be happy with it as is. I tried to mount one of the short shifters I had from the preludes but the mount is different. I also didn't want to mount the prelude shifter since the one I have in the accord seems much more solid already.
Prelude seat sits nicely and quite a bit lower than the accord seat. I like it This is the rear interior from the CL. Everything fits nicely, still mock fit since I need to run cables for the battery still. CL rear side panels, I'm really happy to get rid of the custom leather inserts that came with the car, they were a major pain. CL lower door panel with Accord upper untouched seat mount Trimmed and moved over, the mount was originally offset to the right like 2-3 inches CL door buttons, I have no clue what that extra button is supposed to do but it looked cool so I left it. Rear mount, this was the tough one. I left one of the rivets in place, I turned the mount 180 and bent it forward. I had to notch it a bit to bend it. I drilled a new hole and bolted where the second rivet would go. Again like I said before I will get this tacked in place later for a little more safety. This mount is interesting. I left it so I could swivel it a bit. I would like to get this tacked on as well but I wouldn't be able to reach the bolt. I may need to trim it a bit so I can reach the bolt and make it solid. Rear mount, just a bit angled to make it fit. I guess either way once its tacked on it will be solid. Just a quick pic of the car I still have not finished painting and never wet sanded after I painted it. Should be pretty decent once its done. New hood latch and removing all of the red washers and adding blue. Overflow tank. Its not super nice but should do the job.
10-10-2016, 06:36 PM
Re: 94 Accord H23A Vtec Swap Thread
