91CivicTurbo

So my cousin ran his 97 civic low on oil and wrecked the motor. So he found a 97 civic that was totalled being parted out on craigslist and bought the motor and auto trans for $300. He asked me to come down and do the swap for him because he doesnt know much about cars, I drove down there yesterday and saw the engine he bought has a different intake manifold than the one in the car and I was wondering if I can just switch the intakes out using the y7 intake on the y8 motor so all my sensors match up. or is there more differences that I didnt notice between the y8 and y7? Just trying to get the car running and not do any extra work that isnt 100% necessary especially taking the head off and getting into the timing and all that. This motor ran how it sits and id like to leave it alone as much as possible. Ive spent hours searching but everyone swapping motors seems to want more power whereas i Just want to get the thing running. Im an hour and a half away from him and want to get this completely figured out before I go back down there. I have the 2 motors sitting side by side in the garage, neither says V-tec on the valve cover. I know a good amount about cars in general but nothing specific to hondas really

HondaPartsHero

Y7 is non VTEC, Y8 is VTEC. If he just needs a running car swap manifolds over and plug and play the rest. It won't run optimally but it will run. I believe the auto trans differ however so I don't believe he can use the Y8 trans with the Y7 ECU without swapping the VTEC ECU into in.

91CivicTurbo

Ok thanks. Im going to swap the transmissions as well since we dont know the condition of the one on the Y8 motor and we know the one that was in the car is good. By not running optimally you mean it just wont have as much power as it could right because itll basically be running as a non vtec?

spens 91 Ef

id look for the vtec solenoid somebody could have swapped heads. also to i believe the y7 dizzy will not bolt up to y8 head if it doesnt you can run it with 2 bolts in or cut the mounts. you can run the y8 intake mani with the y7 ecu no problem because its a auto mani.
is his car a auto?

91CivicTurbo

Ill have to see if it has the solenoid when i go down there. Is it going to make a difference whether i can use it or not if it doesnt have a vtec solenoid? Is the distributor thats on the y8 motor not going to plug into the y7 wire harness? I thought they were the same. And yes his cars an auto if your talking about the transmission.

HondaPartsHero

Doesn't matter if it has the solenoid or not. Y7/y8 distributors are interchangeable

91CivicTurbo

Alright awesome

Honda Garage

d16y7/d16y8 distributors are the same...easiest way to swap engines from a d16y7 to a d16y8 (both from automatic civics) would be to get the complete engine, engine harness, intake tube/airbox and ecu from the car that has the d16y8...keep the d16y8 intake manifold on the d16y8 engine...if that is done then everything will be plug and play

spens 91 Ef

my bad it must be the y7 to z6 thats different. and on the solenoid he said something earlier about the vc not having vtec writing on them. the y8 auto vs manual intake manis are different and the autos what you need.

vtec wires that would have to be ran if you were trying to do a full swap^

91CivicTurbo

Well I just swapped the intake manifold and left the vtec solenoid alone and the car starts up and runs fine. But the transmission which was swapped with the motor has no reverse and the D4 stays lit up no matter what gear i put it in. When I first drove it it felt like it was starting in 2nd gear or 3rd, and reverse worked fine, now it just doesnt work. fluid level is good. also the speedometer is constantly going up to 120mph or so and back to 0 and back again while the cars running

Honda Garage

1...is the torque converter bolted on to the flexplate?
2...are the plugs for the shift solenoids connected?

HondaPartsHero

So you used the ex transmission? If so you can't use can't use it with your Y7 ECU. The shift points differ.