joelfespinoza

Ok, I have searched and searched all over and am nearly at my wits end. I need help of some kind.

My girlfriend has a 1998 Civic DX (OBD2a), It was blowing air like crazy into the cooling system and shooting out water in a very annoying fashion. Other than that it had no issues besides a cracked exhaust manifold. No codes, passed emissions etc. I decided the head was cracked so I got a d16y8 head figuring its basically a bolt on with a couple wires and an ECU change and im good to go for a OBD2a MiniMe.....

First I installed the head/intake and wanted to get it all running on the P2E ecu (p2p isnt here yet) I figured this should be cake, especially since I have a automatic d16y8 head/intake so I can just reuse my my DX TB and injectors and everything plugs right in. Here comes the nightmare.

The engine throws 2 codes, idles at 3k rpms, sometimes does the hunting honda idle and generally runs like ****. Ohh and as far as I can tell cyl 4 never fires.

- P0304: Cyl 4 misfire. Probable causes: vaccum leak, ignition system, blocked/faulty injector, engine mechanical condition.

- P1399: random Cyl misfire. Probable causes: valve clearance out of range.

I have spent 4 days of hell doing everything I can think of, clearanced all the valves, resealed the intake (fricking cold start ports in the intake/head) checked everywhere for vacuum leaks, made sure everything is hooked up right, checked for spark on all the cylinders (even though its the exact same ignition system that was working fine before the head swap) using NGK plugs of.. errr some kind... I should probably check but they were working fine before the headswap.

The head appeared to be all right when I bought it so while it may or may not be pristine on the valve sealing they all go up and down and see to visibly seat ok, so I cant image that is keeping #4 from even attempting to fire.

It could be the cam timing, I cant seem to ever get the arrows on the head to line up with the arrow marks on the head, it seems I am always to far advanced or to far retarded, I cant seem to get everything lined up perfect. (even though everyone swears y7/y8 cam gears are the exact same mine are half a tooth different, so someone may have switched one for a z6, any hints on how to tell which one is the OBD2 one?) However it seems wierd it would run this bad even if it is a tooth off. I cant image even a tooth off causing a cylinder to stop working entirely.

Anyone have any thoughts or ideas? Anything I should try or look at? This is the only car we have and I desperately need to get it going again.