Originally Posted by B18C5-EH2

Method number one:

Find any 1996-2001 Integra engine harness. Ideally it should be a GS-R or Type R unit, but if all you can find is an LS then it's only a few extra wires. I'd imagine they should not be too hard to come by and will cost probably no more than $100.00-$150.00 used and they are only $350.00 or so brand new from Honda if you need a reference point.


If you can locate the 96-01 engine harness then simply plug it into the engine and drop the engine in. Even though the harness is technically "OBD2" trust me it is a direct plug in for the 1992-1995 Civic on the underhood strut tower harnesses.

What ever you decide you should ditch the 99-00 Si ECU. It is OBD2 and horrible. What you'll need to run is a re-chipped P28 (1992-1995 SOHC VTEC ECU) from Kenji Plennert in Florida. His e-mail adress is kenji211@tampabay.rr.com - tell him Tom sent you from H-T. I run his ECU on my Type R swap and it is way better than any stock OBD2 crap ECU. even if you wanted to keep the 99-00 ECU you'd need to buy a jumper harness and wire up all of that extra OBD2 bullshit, which is not necessary.

If you run that re-chipped P28 and the 96-01 Integra harness then the swap is almost 100% plug and play. Hell in your Civic VX it will be 100% plug and play if you find a GS-R or Type R harness. Not one single wire will need to be ran this way. My 1992 CX (prewired for VTEC like your VX is, because all 1992 Civics were wired for VTEC regardless of trim) didn't require one single wire at all with my 1998 B18C5 swap because I used a re-chipped P28 and the Integra engine harness.

Actually I just recalled that you will have to only do one thing wiringwise. Simply extend the two wires foir the intake air temperature sensor. for some reason the B16A2 is the only B motor that I know od that locates its IAT sensor into the actual intake tubing rather than the intake manifold itself. for this reason you must simply extend the existing two wires for that sensor on the engine harness to stretch from the intake manifold (where it is on the Integra) to whatever intake arm you decide to run.

Method Number Two:

If you are just way too broke to buy a used 96-01 Integra engine harness, you can use your stock Civic harness. It will require more work, but if you don't mind that then you could save some money. I'll go ahead and tell you that if I were you I'd really try to find that Integra engine harness, but here goes anyways.

To use your stock Civic harness you will need to do some minor wiring changes and a few other things. It's not hard and if you just breathe deeply and read this I think you'll find it to be prety easy actually. I used this method back in 1999 when I put a B16A2 into my fiancee's car, and I did not know that the 96-01 Integra harness would make it near plug and play.

Change #1:

First of all there will be a minor difference in the plug style on the distributor. Some people will say :"get an OBD1 distributor" but they must think that OBD1 distributors are cheap or easy to find used. The B16A2 distributor will have one big plug on it, while your stock Civic and it's engine harness has two plugs. All you have to do is unpin the two lowest fat wires from the B16A2 distributor and repin them into the extra plug on the VX engine harness.

Here's a picture of the B16A2 distributor. The arrows are pointing to the wires you need to unpin. This is a picture of an unaltered B16A2 distributor:



So here's that extra plug on your VX harness with the two wires already ran into it. Notice the wires are the exact same color, making it "idiot proof" so to speak. i'm glad they decided to keep the same colors: