Steve Berman

First, im NO wiring expert. All information contained here was gatherd from the HT web site and from my own personal experience recently when swaping a USDM GSR ODB 1 engine into my 92 CX. Everything I post relates to that particular swap. Other swaps may be similar but my goal is not to be a swap expert, but to share with others what worked for me. If anything here needs to be corrected or added to, simply add it; just make sure your right!


General Info
All 92 USDM Civics came pre-wired for vtec. Meaning no vtec related wires should be manually ran on 92 civics.

On my swap, I simply used the 95 GSR Wiring harness that came with the swap and connected it to the factory harness near the battery and near the master cylinder.


I only had to run 2 wires for my swap which included:

1 ) knock sensor
2 ) IAB ( Secondary Intake Runner Control )
3 ) Double Cheese Burger line. ( kidding )

On a p72 ECU, you will see this:


The two wires that we were concerned with on our swap were:
1)Knock Sensor Red/Blue D3
2)Secondary Intake Solenoid Pink/Blue A17

Lets first cover the Knock sensor wire.

On the Gsr wiring harness you will notice there is a pink wire with a blue strip that dosent continue through the connection on the stock civic harness. This is where I manually tapped into that wire, then simply extended it through the firewall to my ECU @ D3.

heres a pic of it being tapped in on the GSR harness:
( note its surrounded with black electrical tape on the left )


Manually running a wire to the ECU isnt the easiest thing to do simply because you have to ensure that the wire makes a good stable connection with the pin on the ecu. Im sure there are better ways to connect wires to the ecu but my way is simple, reliable, and pretty strait forward.

To manually run a wire to the ecu using my method, get about 8 inches of some regular 'ole speaker wire. Using a wire stripper/cutter, cut about 3" of and completly strip the surrounding off. At this point you should be left with a nice 3" piece of copper strands. Take the strands and twist them up nice and tight. After you have them nice and skinny, slip them through the correct hole on the wiring harness clip at the computer. You will have something like this:




If you look at the clip for the harness @ the ECU, you will notice that each empty slot has two holes or tunnels. What I did was feed the twisted copper wire through the bottom half of the tunnel and fed about 2-3mm of the wire back through the top. This makes a loop and also ensures the pin on the ECU gets good contact.

Heres a pic after the loop. Sorry for the quality:



After you have it looped through and nice and secure, give it a tug on the end that comes strait out to make it nice and tight. If you pull to hard you will obviously pull the top half from the clip so dont get crazy. When your sure theres a nice tight fit and theres just a little room to squeeze the ecu pin in there, slip the plug in nice and deep untill you hear it snap

Then connect the wire you ran from the firewall to the 3" twisted speaker wire. Add some electrical tap and w00t. one wire down.

* if you do not connect this wire properly, you will throw a code 23 after 10 minutes of driving duration. See below for CEL assistance.


Secondly, lets cover the IAB wire

If you search different places you will read about switching wires a17 with a20 on the harness. I figured this was correct considering 10 resources on the net said so. Well, I got down and looked at my harness for A17 and A20. I notices that A17 didnt have anything going to it and A20 had a solid red wire going to it. Thinking logically, i wondered how you could swap a17 with a20 if a17 didnt even have a wire. I figured what the hell and clipped the red wire @ a20 and connected one of my infamous 3" speaker wires and ran it through a17 on the wiring harness. I then tapped everything up and pluged it in. I unplugged the negative terminal on my batter for 30 sec then plugged it back in. Crunk up the car and yay. No cel, no nada.

To check and verify that your IAB is working properly. Crank the car up and pop the hood. Place your left hand on the throttle rotor and give it a good push.

While your pushing the rottor, keep an eye on the IAB located on the other side of the intake manifold as shown here:



Once the engine hits ~ 5700rpms, you will see the IAM rotate, opening the smaller runners in the intake manifold. NOTE: im not sure if its 5700 rpms for sure but somewhere near there.

CEL Decoding

Having a stock CX, if something is wired incorrectly, you will get a solid CEL. Many people talk about getting code this and that. To figure out what code is causing your cel to come on. first locate the green rubber cap that houses a set of clips under the dash on the passenger side. If you pull the green rubber housing off, you will see two clips that look like this:



The one clip that you should be concerned with is the on on the left in the image. It has two wires going to it. One brown and one green. The other clip has a baby blue wire. You do not need to be concerned with this clip at all.

After you locate the correct clip, whip out the remaining 2 inches of your " twisted speaker wire " and (while the ignition is off ) stick one end into the clip on the brown wire and one end in the clip where the green wire is.

Then turn on the ignition and wala.

Here is a list of the codes: http://tech.hybridgarage.com/tech/codes.html

It appears that the CEL will stay on solid if you have the cilp connected and you are not throwing any codes.

If your in normal driving mode and your cel comes on,
1)cut off ignition
2)hook up the speaker wire into the clip
3) turn ignition on and count the flashes on the CEL. 1 long flash = 10 1 short flash = 1

Then trouble shoot the problem accordingly.

ok my hands hurt. im not spell checking this or anything. the info is here so all enjoy. note, the reason I did this is because all wiring info seemed very so I just put togather what worked for me.

later,
steve

smnowell

nice tech On a gsr swap I did, i didn't bother swapping the A20 wires, cause the EVAP Purge Solenoid at A20 is there for emissions purposes correct? I would think people in Cali might have issues with smog and this not being hooked up (but I could be wrong). What I did is just run a wire for the IAB and connected it to A17 and it worked fine! There are actually two wries going to the IAB, one is the sender wire and and the other is a ground. And the IAB sensor is the sensor that is basically under/inside the middle of the intake manifold. You should just collaborate all your threads into one big "How To: GSR swap into EG" that would be VERY helpful to all those who are looking to do this themselves and haven't done it before

hatchdrvr

Good info!!!! Wiring is always one of the scariest things about any swap, hopefully your info will help someone in need.

tommyboy

Nice post, this is exactly why I log on to H-T everyday.

SpooN Man

Damn, Just buy some ecu clips and remove the pins. That is gettho tech.

tvrsir

ok can you help me with code 41 which is for the heater circuit on the 02. my cx came withe the one wire 02 style. i want to run a 4 wire is there any tech out there that shows this?

92CIVICCX

does that include canadian hatches??? the vtec wire.. for those made in canada

Fuster_Cluck

to that

Can someone tell me if this would pertain to my 93 Cx and my 98 GSR motor???

If so, this should be really helpful when it comes to the wiring.

Steve Berman

How do you remove them? Just push them out with a paper clip or what? Be specific because I will go redo mine. No one said anything about me being able to do that so, I guess my last and only resort was " ghetto tech"

degooser

good tech....this is like using the search button in one post...!!

ImportechPerformance

Hell yeah!! good info much better than waking up to antother lame pathectic "look at my whored out spoon SI and what i did to it this time..!!"

Hahah no really this should be very helpful to the noobies including the not so noobies too....like mua

*EDIT* on a side note does anyone know where we can purchase the plastic clips that clip on to the ecu?


[Modified by TheRedSkoolingBus, 8:26 AM 2/27/2003]

oldbeefcake

Why do you have to switch the wires from A20 to A17. I never heard of that before. All I did is run a wire to A17 and that was it. I need to check the helm again to see why.

SpooN Man

Sure, I'll be glad to help. You will need to look at the front of the ecu plugs. The side That the WIRES DO NOT come out from. You should see a spot that you can insert a pin into. The ecu pins them selfs have a clip that "clicks" in. What you have to do is use the pin to "unclick" the ecu pin. Then you just pull on the wires to remove it. It's not that hard to do.

http://tjshondas.20m.com/b16awire.html

on the bottom of this page is a pic that shows you how to do it.

43MA

on 96+ gsr swaps you need to wire in the iab differently
they are switch polarity then 94-95

obd1= IAB solenoid always has 12v+, ecu switches ground side
obd2= IAB solenoid always grounded, ecu switches power side

what you need to do is wire in the iab so it always has 12v+ and run the ground side to A17 of the ecu

jEE

nice pics.

nice guide.

nice tech

jameskersten1

can someone post those pics again, all i got was the red X so... would be great since i am wiring my b18c1 right now

i ride a bike

i got red x's

slowhatch4now

i think this is the exact thing i need
ahh need the pictures tho please
Peace

dwnthehatch

iTrader: (1)

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Jun &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Why do you have to switch the wires from A20 to A17. I never heard of that before. All I did is run a wire to A17 and that was it. I need to check the helm again to see why.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Check out this thread: https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=631748

Steve Berman

Sorry about the pics. Images are back up.

white ex

excellent write up, finally clear details on wiring.

Steve Berman

informational bump