BongoBennie

Can someone explain CAN-BUS and how it relates to engine swaps? Im interested in swapping everything from a Honda Ridgeline into a different chassis and retain as much of the stock functionality as I can including cruise control, ABS, etc. I also want AC but it won't be Ridgeline inside the cabin. KTuner will most likely be added but not sure if that matters.

motoxxxman

it's a communication protocol, where everything passes through the communication wires instead of their own dedicated wires. A network of sorts, like this forum. And it uses a specific language, not just on/off signals.

as an example, cruise control in an obd1 vehicle: turn on cruise switch and an ON signal goes to the BCM for the cruise switch. hold the accel button and an ON signal goes to the BCM on the accel wire. The BCM then reads rpms signal on the rpm wire and interprets what to do, and sends a signal to the cruise control solenoid to increase or decrease vacuum which pulls on the throttle linkage. The key though is everything has its own wire going to the BCM, and the buttons are simply on/off switches directly to the BCM, and the BCM sends an on/off frequency directly to the cruise control solenoid.

With canbus, everything talks. Turning on the cruise control makes a phone call through the communication wires telling all modules that cruise is turned on. Then hitting the accel button again makes another phone call and says "bruh, go faster", and all the modules chat with each other on these communication lines telling each other what to do.

and something like RPM for the tach and ecu: with obd1, the distributor sensors have wires to the ecu to tell it what the rpm is, and the ecu has wires to the igniter which tell it when to spark, and the coil has a wire that pulses with each spark that goes to the tach, and the tach reads the frequency of the pulses on this wire and rises to the calibrated level for that frequency. Whereas with canbus, the same sensors go to the ecu the same way, but the ecu makes a global phone call on the communication lines saying to everybody "hey dudes, we're at 2739rpm", and the instrument cluster receives the phone call and decides to make the gauge show 2739rpm

the purpose of canbus is to eliminate wiring. IE: obd1 instrument cluster has power and ground and like 40 other wires. canbus instrument cluster has power and ground and a single communication cable

BongoBennie

Thanks for the reply, This tells me that a non canbus donor would be the easiest way to make it work. Will there be a specification label anywhere that will tell me which cars have this? Apparently 08 was a popular year from my brief research. Ridgeline would be ideal. Also using the ridgeline gauge cluster would work too as I'm going to get a complete vehicle, main concern is A/C and second is ABS

motoxxxman

there will not be any easy way to identify which has it and which doesn't. Only way to know is to do some research.

BongoBennie

I found this OBD II Connector Pinout and http://www.auterraweb.com/aboutcan.html