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As most of you know, my crx si was stolen. Im no longer going to have a website any more, and ive have linked several people to my website for install instructions, etc over the past 3 years... im going to change that link to this post, and take my website down. So for those that need to know how to install a b16a into a crx si , here you go!
Disclaimer~ This is my own testimony of how to swap a b16a into your crx or civic. Use this guide at your own risk. I will not accept responsibility for any mishaps due to the information given in this swap guide. It contains all the information you will need if you use it concurrently with the b16a service manual. Be sure to read this though because there is some info here that you probably not read before and you wont find this in the service manuals. This guide is meant for swapping a b16a into a 1990-91 model CRX Si. There are some minor differences between the different models of the crx. At this time I do not have any of that information but I will work on getting that information and then revising this article for the users. If you have a dx this is basically the same but the wiring is alot more complicated, if you have an hf this is almost exact but you will need some components such as Knuckles and Hubs from other Honda vehicles.
Tools Needed:
3/8 and 1/2 Inch Rachets and socket set, extensions, sockets range from 8mm up to 19mm, and deep sockets
a 32mm socket for 1/2 inch ratchet(axle nut remover)
1 Pickle Bar or Ball Joint Separator
1 Fwd Axle Puller (not necessary but helpful) (can rent at autozone)
a set of punches
A hammer, preferably a 5lb sledge, but any hammer will work
Engline Lift
Replacement parts: See end of swap guide for this list
lets get started
There are many places to get a swap from but I recommend Hmotorsoline.com I got the complete swap for 1250 plus shipping. The motor came straight to my door exactly as promised. Regardless of where you get it from you will need the following (Engine, Tranny, A aftermarket mount kit, axles, shift linkages, ecu and at least 300 dollars for all the small things you will have to replace as you go. I recommend you plan ahead for this, I thought my swap was going to take one weekend and it ended up taking a whole week. Be sure to have some friends that will be dedicated to helping you with the swap. That you have plenty of tools and access to a computer with the internet.
1. You will need a 32mm socket, a 1/2 drive ratchet and a big break over bar, you need to remove the center cap on your wheels, and break the axle nut.
2. Loosen the lugs on your front wheels. Put the car in gear and put blocks under the rear wheels, then proceed to jack the car up as high as possible, go ahead and put the jack stands ups.
3. Disconnect the battery negative terminal, then disconnect the positive terminal and remove the battery, and battery tray
4. Unbolt the hood brackets from the hood, set the hood in a safe location to prevent denting. Also put the four bolts from the hood into a zip lock baggie, and label it
5. Drain the engine oil, reinstall the drain plug.
6. Drain the coolant from the radiator into pan.
7. Drain the transmission fluid as well.
8. Remove the intake and all the pipes.
9. Relieve the fuel pressure by slowly loosening the service bolt on the fuel filter, about 1 turn.
10. Disconnect the engine compartment harness connectors, battery wires, and the transmission ground cable.
11. Remove the throttle cable by loosening the lock nut and throttle cable adjust nut, Then slip the cable end out of the bracket.
12. Remove the engine ground straps that are bolted to the valve cover.
13. Disconnect the radiator hoses and heater hoses.
14. Remove the speedometer cable from the vss in the tranny
15. Remove the ac compressor from the bracket on the block, then use some zip ties and tie it up out of the way.
16. Remove the exhaust manifold heat shields, then remove then remove the bolts at the collector/catalytic converter. After you are done with this you need to disconnect the linkages off of dseries motor, you will need a punch and a hammer, you will have to hammer this little pin out, this is a pain in the *** and then once its out there is one more bolt and you are done with the linkages.
17. Remove the exhaust manifold bolts and remove the stock manifold. You will want to do this or else you will have a hard time getting the engine out of the bay.
18. Now you need to remove the clutch cable, be careful not to bend or kink the cable.
19. Next remove your radiator hoses, off of the radiator, remove the heater hoses off the back of the engine, Be prepared, you are going to spew fluid everywhere, have a towel near by.
20. Time to remove the axles, Remove the damper fork nut, and damper pinch bolt, then remove the damper fork. Refer to the picture below
21. Now you need to remove the cotter pin on the lower ball joint, and then remove the castle nut. Take a hammer, and your ball joint separator tool and separate the ball joint, this will allow you to move the hub freely. **Important: Dip the fork into a can of grease to prevent tearing the ball joint boot8*
22. Now you have 2 options, you can take a hammer, and a punch and beat on the axle for however long it takes to pop the axle out of the hub, On my crx the axle was seized so after 30 minutes of beating on it, I drank a beer and decided maybe there is a tool I could use to do this for me, So I trekked up to AutoZone and rented this tool. It cost me a 50.00 deposit. I got home, hooked it up, and within 2 minutes the axle was popped out, basically it’s a press and it presses the axle out. Took the tool back got my 50.00 refunded to me.
23. Now you need to remove the axle from the Tranny, don’t pull on the axle, unless u want to throw it away. Pry on it with something that has a good edge. It will come out. After that you need to hammer out the bitch pin on the shift linkage, use a punch, and the 5lb hammer, your car will need to be pretty high up to be able to get enough of a swing on the linkage, after thats done there is a bolt for the linkage in the tranny, take that out!
24. Now repeat these same exact steps for the other side.
25. Now remove the vacuum hoses off your intake manifold, and look over the engine to see if any hoses or anything is hooked up that might need to be disconnected. If needed disconnect the hoses etc..
26. Next pull you engine hoist over the motor, and attach the chains to the motor like it is displayed in the manual. And follow the rest of the steps mentioned on the page below.
If you hooked up your chains right it should look something like this, the tricky par is, that if your going to keep your ac, you will have to drop the motor down and tilt it up so you can get around all the ac lines.
27. Okay congratulations, you have pulled your motor out, this is the easiest part of the entire swap. Now here comes the fun stuff.
28. Carefully remove the engine harness from the motor, you also need to remove the plugs for your injectors off the stock motor.
29. Now you need to plug from the harness to all your sensors, its pretty much plug and play and its not that easy to confuse. You will have one extra plug that you cant plug in, its an extra, its white, square in shape and has 2 wires,
30. Now this is where your swap becomes tricky! you need to add 5 wires to your engine, What I did was buy 5 different colored 18 gauge wire from AutoZone, about 10 bucks total, took about 15 feet of four wires, took about 2 foot in length, and then taped the rest of the four wires together. then I made my five connections, 1 for the vtec solenoid, 1 for the knock sensor, 1 for the secondary o2 sensor, 1 for the vtec pressure switch. And the fifth wire is for a ground for the vtec pressure switch, I ran the 5th wire separately. so make these connections, and then wrap the wire up so it will be out of the way,
31. This is also a good time to replace parts, I opted to replace my valve cover gasket, and spark plug grommets, alternator belt, distributor cap, spark plugs, plug wires, and the rotor, (now im not the only who had a problem so im going to give some advice, if you replace the rotor, I would buy some thread lock and put some around the screw and make sure you tighten it very well or else you will have to buy a new distributor like I did, they aren't cheap and they are hard to come by).
32. This is the most important step right here, Remove your radiator, remove the ac fan, and remove the cooling fan, its not that hard to do, and then when you are done, remove the cross member. It is held on by 6 bolts. If you are using a hasport or place racing or any mount kit that only uses 3 mounts, than it does not use a front mount, now in order for your motor to fit you need to remove the bracket that the front mount bolts too. I drilled a few of the welds and after destroying my bit, I used a crow bar and the ball joint separator and basically pryed them back and forth until they broke off. Your going to reinstall this stuff once u have the motor back in, don't worry about it for now, It will be easier to put the motor back in without the radiator and hoses and all that. so just set it aside somewhere!
33. Get a hammer, and beat the crap out of the right side of the frame on the car, where your alternator is going to go. you need to make a dent roughly 2 inches in diameter and the dent needs to be at least a half inch. its in the same location as your right shock just alot lower.
33. Okay so the motor should be all ready to go now, if you want to save time you can also go ahead and install the new oil filter.
Install the new rear motor mount to the rear cross member, go ahead and get it tightened as well. Chain the motor similar to how you chained your stock motor jack it high up in the air, remove the factory exhaust manifold. Attach the Tranny mount to the Tranny, don't tighten it, just finger tighten the bolt. Install the driver side mount but tighten it all the way. Now position it over the car very carefully. Now this is the tricky part, you do not want to damage your ac lines because they are extremely expensive to replace, you need to drop the motor down at a big enough angle to clear the lines, and then you can come up with the motor, this is really hard to explain but you will realize what you have to do once you get the motor in the air, you will definitely need another person, or 2 people if you have them. Once you have the motor positioned inside the bay properly, bolt the driver side mount to the car, Go ahead and tighten the Tranny mount after you get it positioned in the bracket and then bolt it up, now if you did this all correctly your motor should be sitting there beautifully over the rear mount, you might need to push on the motor a little bit once u got it on there perfect, attach the engine to the rear mount.
34. Now go over all your mounts and make sure everything is torque'd down properly, I think it is supposed to be torqued to at least 70 lbs.
35. Now hook your engine harness to the main body harness, also make an cut into the rubber boot in the firewall and feed your wires to the ecu.
36. If your going to hook up your ac now is the time to do so, you will need a hasport bracket, place racing or im told u can modify a b-series bracket.
37. Reinstall the exhaust manifold, now you will notice that the manifold will not mate to your cat, no worries you can still drive it around, but you need to pay a visit to your nearest muffler shop and have them make an extension. Or if you have a new header it should work fine, i had a stock header from my 00 si so i just slapped it on there and its set.
38. Reinstall the cross member, and then the radiator, followed by the cooling fan, your ac fan is probably not going to fit, at least mine didn't. If your not using ac no problems.
39. Hook up all the radiator hoses and heater hoses.
40. Hook up your fuel lines, I had to use some pieces off of my stock motor you might also, now you should hook up your vacuum hoses but I will save that one for last. go ahead and reinstall your ground straps on the valve cover and for the transmission.
41. Time for the axle reinstall. Now when I did this I was furious because one of my axles that came with the swap was trash and so I had to redo all this crap so this is totally up to you, but you can get 90-91 integra axles from autozone for 120 bucks, and when u bring them the old axle they give 60.00 bucks back so it maybe worth while for you to buy new axles give them your old ones and you be done with the axle dilemma, however don't give them the old ones until you know for sure these will work. Im not sure what the hasport guy is talking about when he shows u all the different axles and maybe I just got lucky but 1990 integra axles worked perfectly for me, basically this is the same as how you removed them just backwards. go back to step 20 and 21 if you are unsure of how to do this. Now, if you are using the integra axles you need to remove the caps inside the hubs
42. Reassemble your suspension, and tighten the axle nut. (once the car is on the ground you will need to come back and torque this down)
43. Go ahead and fill your engine with 5 quarts of oil, your choice, fill the Tranny up with 2 qts and then go ahead and add coolant, I think the stock radiator holds almost 1 gallon and a half I could be wrong though.
44. Hook up your clutch cable and vehicle speed sensor. (speedo cable)
45. Throttle cable, you will need one from a 90-93 integra ls. this is so simple basically you remove the old one feed it through the firewall and hook it up opposite of how you removed it, be sure and tighten the cable really good (I didn't have mine tightened enough it wasn't even open half way when I hit the pedal.
46. Vacuum hoses, below is a diagram of what to do. you will need a few tee fittings.
47. Wiring- this is the easiest / hardest part of the swap. This really takes patients and you have to be careful. First things first if your ecu came with the old connectors being cut off I would practice on removing the pins, I bought a kit from radio shack for 5 bucks it looked like dentist tools, after 30 minutes of practice I had it down. You have three plugs a,b,c first you are going to take the wire you designated for vtec use a but connector and connect it to one of the pins that you made, you are going to add this pin to plug A in slot 8(a8). now for the rest of the wires look at plug a as your guide so you know what direction to look at the plug and how to count the slot etc.. Now find the C plug, and count to the 8th connector(c8), get another butt connector and connect it to another pin that you pulled out earlier to the wire you made for the 2nd o2 sensor and add the pin to the clip. Okay now take plug be and count to the 5th connector (b5) and you are going to give yourself a little slack and cut the wire, put a cap on the wire engine side of the wire, you will no longer use this wire, Use a butt connector and and crimp the wire that you added for the vtec pressure sensor and connect them together. And last but not least. find pin b19, cut it like you did b5 and cap off the engine side of the wire, then use a butt connector and crimp the knock sensor wire that you ran.
48. Reinstall the battery, check your grounds, and reinstall the intake.
49. Okay time to check everything,
50. Slide under the car and install your shift linkage, im going to give u instructions if your using the hasport linkage, basically you need the bushings off the linkages that came with your swap, if not you are going to need to order some, im assuming the ones off a b16a del sol will work pull the old linkage down and install the new one, its pretty self explanatory, the hardest part is getting the pin back in, on the linkages, you will once again need a punch and you will have to hammer it in.
51. Put the wheels back on, finger tight, or as tight as you can get, remove jack stands, lower car, then take your 32 mm socket and be sure and tighten the axle nuts and then there is thing that you beat on with a hammer to lock the nut in place. Now go ahead and tighten your lugs all the way
52. Give everything another look and fire the motor up.
Axles (S1 intermediate shaft) Integra '90-'91, any make (non-ABS).
Throttle Cable '90-'91 Integra, any model. Part # 17910-SK7-A03 (Acura)
Clutch Cable '88-'91 CRX Si, may require modification to fit.
Shift Linkage + Torque Rod '90-'93 Integra, requires modification to fit, or buy pre-cut (highly advised)
Clutch Disc Integra non-GSR, '90-'91.
Clutch Plate Integra non-GSR, '90-'91 (?????)
Throwout/release bearing Integra GSR, '92-'93 (?????)
Flywheel bearing Intergra GSR, '92-'93 (?????)
Cam seal endplug Part # 12513-P30-000
Oil Filter Integra GSR, '92-'93.
Valvecover Gasket Part # 12341-PR3-000. del Sol VTEC '94+.
Oil Pan Gasket Part # 11251-P30-004, del Sol VTEC '94+.
Intake Manifold Gasket Part # 17105-P30-004, del Sol VTEC '94+.
Exhaust Manifold Gasket Part # 18115-P30-013, Del Sol VTEC, '94+.
Rear coolant hose (IACV?) Part # 19507-PR3-000 (Honda)
Cam Seals Part # 91213-PR3-013 (Honda)
Cam seal endplug Part # 12513-P30-000 (Honda)
Spark plug tower seals Part # 12342-PG6-000 (Honda)
Valve cover grommets Part # 90442-P30-000 (Honda)
Timing belt cover gasket Part # 11831-PR3-000 (Honda)
Head gasket del Sol VTEC '94+
Fuel injector O-rings Part # 91301-PM7-003, del Sol VTEC '94+
Fuel injector rail cushions Part # 16473-PD6-000, del Sol VTEC '94+
Distributor Cap and Rotor Integra non-VTEC kit from Acura ('90-'91 Integra LS) Part # 06303-PR4-000
Water Pump Part # 19200-P30-003, from a '92-'93 Integra GSR.
Front + Rear Crank Seal Integra GSR, '92-'93.
Throttle body gasket Integra LS, '90-'91 (????). del Sol VTEC does NOT fit.
IACV seal CRX Si (?????)
Upper + Lower Radiator Hose del Sol VTEC, '94+.
Timing Belt Part # 14400-PR3-004, del Sol VTEC '94+.
Spark Plugs Part # BKR6E-11 (NGK copper) GAP: 0.039-0.043
Rear Transmission Bracket Part # 50827-SK7-020, '90-'93 Integra non-VTEC (80% sure)
Coolant hose, back of block to intake manifold Part # 19507-PR3-000, del Sol VTEC '94+.
Last edited by slowpokesi; 03-25-2015 at 09:58 AM.
<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by slowpokesi »</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">As most of you know, my crx si was stolen. Im no longer going to have a website any more, and ive have linked several people to my website for install instructions, etc over the past 3 years... im going to change that link to this post, and take my website down.
</TD></TR></TABLE>
I can post it on my website for an added measure if you would like. Just IM me and we can talk about, only if you want though.
<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 88 Crx Si »</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">this shall be an official thread. good looking out </TD></TR></TABLE>
<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SpankyofNOLA »</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">sorry about the rex dude
does this guide work on first gen crxs? i have a 85 crx si that i would like to do this swap soon. could you PM me with a yes or no about that? thx! </TD></TR></TABLE>
Not exactly, however this guide should walk you through, its pretty much the same, the wiring , and vaccum hoses and such would be diffrent, and the axles might be diffrent, but as far as a basic how to do it this should work.
nice writup.. since im a noob to swaps, it gave me an idea where to start on an engine swap.. im also horrible witih wires and **** so im going to have lots of fun with the ecu and vtec wiring when the time comes
03-28-2005, 07:02 AM
B16a Crx Swap Guide
could you PM me with a yes or no about that? thx! 
