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Still did not fix the exhaust leak. Its not super loud but it makes an annoying sound. I just ordered this to hopefully fix the problem. HONDA Header/Exhaust Manifold Gasket
The 3 gasket approach was just not working for me, ill post again once I know how well or poorly it works.
First major issue with the car in quite a while. My wife is putting at least 800 miles a week on the car. The Belt for the AC has been slipping on and off since the swap. It finally gave out this week, it was super hot out and it pretty much disintegrated. It also took out my PS belt at the same time, no big deal since I was pulling into my driveway when it gave out. The major problem was that I had no clue what belt I had used for the AC. I may have grabbed an LS one from the Junk yard or used the one from the D16. I tried a few belts I had laying around and they were either too long or not long enough. I did some research online and... well everyone has a different opinion.
I am using the D16 Compressor with Del Sol mount and I believe its the B20 Crank pulley. I had a hard time confirming what pulley I was using, I'm still not positive but I believe the LS one is Equal Size for the AC and Alt where the B20 has a larger diameter for the AC. I ended up grabbing both a LS belt and CRV belt. I ended up using the CRV belt that was shorter. I tried that one first and it fit perfectly. The belt was 845.06mm and the part was 333k4 and 4PK0845. I wanted to get that out there just in case anyone else was searching for the answer. I'm positive that with the other belt i would run out of adjustment.
I also wanted to note that the REMFLEX exhaust gasket worked great and its been nice and quiet for the last few months. So far i highly recommend it.
I ended up driving the car over the weekend and put a few hundred miles on it myself. I notice a lot of heat coming from the EBrake arm rest area. I assume that's exhaust heat coming from the Catalytic converter. I'm seriously thinking about swapping out the exhaust to the almost new one i have sitting in the garage with the test pipe. With the stock exhaust and cat the performance took a big hit. I think if i change it out the gas mileage will be better and hopefully with a better flowing exhaust the exhaust temps will go down.
I cant seem to log in with Gmail so I had to create another account to add an update.
I remember putting the boot back on, I was worried it would rip going on but no issues there.
I did swap the exhaust over and the engine feels waay better.
The temp in the car has lowered significantly, I ended up putting the silencer on the exhaust, the loud drone was just too much, the car definitely does not sound as good but I don't have to say " whaaat?" as often. lol.
I think the clutch on the AC may be going out, the AC is very inconsistent. I do have a bit of an idle issue still so that may be part of it as well. When the AC is on the car takes a good 30% cut in power, its almost not worth having on.
Sounds like you might have just had a leak. I need to fix one on my exhaust too. I can hear hear it when I drive past walls & curbs, makes me feel like a jackass in my POS.
Btw, I just noticed your location, we're neighbors. Hope you're doing okay with all of these smoky days.
We had the first major issue with the car about a month ago. The car started overheating when driving uphill in the 110+ temps outside. We were running the Stock 99 Civic Radiator but it had a slim fan and no shroud. I ordered a Yonaka 2 core Aluminum Radiator/Fan/Shroud from amazon($149). I installed that along with a new thermostat and the car has not has any issues since.
Still have a slight idle issue I'm not sure how to sort out. No vacuum leaks and the car idles well except for 2-3 quick surges before smoothing out. The car runs great.
Actually. there is no bleed plug on this engine. I ran it several times with the radiator cap off on my driveway with the front of the car higher. It doesn't seem to be an issue with air in the system, Generally that seems to cause a more consent issue. I'm not sure how else to bleed the system.
Fans kicked on several times, I kept it running until it stopped bubbling. I did it twice. I have had this engine in 2 cars and 4 radiators, The idle has always surged 2-3 times when you let off throttle then it smooths out. Same issue with 3 throttle bodies and multiple IACV's. I'm currently running the skunk 2 TB. This is a very small issue when it comes down to it, just a small bug I would like to clear up.
Swapping out the Map Sensor improved the situation but it still has a bit of a blip. I also replaced the Coil and the car has never ran better.
Last year the Amazon exhaust I had purchased for about 100$ started to sound like crap, its too be expected since it was cheap, it did its job for at least a year. So being short on funds we ordered another amazon exhaust. I think it was a spec D tuning exhaust. This thing sounded horrible, tons and tons of Drone. So I went to the shop and they recommended a glass pack, which I put in place of the test pipe I was running. Well it helped with some of the rasp but didn't do anything for the Drone. So I ordered a Vibrant Resonator, I think 18 inches and had that installed. Rasp was completely gone but the drone was still overwhelming. Shortly after that the muffler/resonator that exhaust starting sounding like a bee hive, the insides broke loose and it was horrible. So after a ton of reading I ordered the OBX Twin Loop Muffler. The install was pretty tight with the rear frame but it sounds awesome. It removed ALL of the drone and brought the exhaust sound waaay down. I highly recommend this muffler. I did consider pulling the glass pack since we currently have 3 resonators on the exhaust but it sounds really good. I think in the future my standard exhaust will be just a custom exhaust with Vibrant 18inch resonator and OBX Twin loop muffler, that should sound perfect.
Finally posting some pics. Some Amazon center caps with Ninjas. Custom Vtec Sticker. OBX Twin Loop muffler Noticed a few days later that the AC condenser was off the mounts.
The P75 I have is not chipped, I may chip it if the P28 works well. I'm not planning on doing any dyno tuning or Street tuning as I don't have a wideband or any other gauges installed. Pretty much I'm just trying to smooth out the idle a bit. This car is a daily driver and it just needs to be dependable. I drove my project car for my son yesterday and.... wow the D16y8(stock) with auto is sooo slow. lol. I forgot how slow my wife's car was before the B20, even before that when we had the D16 and auto.
I did download the B20 bin and I grabbed a p75 bin as well for comparison and they are quite different. Ill give it a shot and see how it performs. I wish I could pull the stock bin from the ECU myself just to be sure the one I downloaded is the same but ill just have to trust in the internet. lol
Car decided it didn't want to start yesterday. I checked the clutch pedal switch to be sure it was not disconnected and that's not the issue, I have it bypassed anyway. Everything else looks fine, battery connections are good, the radio and such turns off when you turn the key, the fuel pump is running.
I used a start button with some clips and connected it the starter signal on the starter and the positive on the battery, with the ignition on the car starts no problem. I shut down the car, connected with ignition back to the starter and it fired right up. I tried this about 7 times and every time no issue. So I wrote it off as a gremlin.
I went to move the car later and.... Same issue, same solution, after manually starting the car, it works fine on its own.
I'm not sure what the issue is, I went ahead and ordered a new ignition today so I will get that installed this weekend. There are a few fuses I may want to look at but honestly I don't think they would work on min and not the next. Any ideas?
Check your grounds. I had intermittent no start/slow crank for a while... it was incredibly frustrating. Every time I thought I had found it, it went away for a few months and came back. Replaced all engine to chassis grounds and both battery cables, have not had an issue since. The parts are not expensive from the dealer, replace all the associated paint cutter bolts while you're in there and wire brush the areas around the cables.
Just to follow up, it was a bad ignition switch. Swapped in the new switch and it fired right up. Took me a bit to get the alarm added again but no biggie.
A few weeks back my wife started having some issues shifting, clutch disengagement was poor. Fluid was a tad low and I can see a little bit of a leak from the master. No biggie, I added some fluid and moved on. A few days later she called me and said she couldn't get it into gear at all. She limped it home and when we looked she had 0 fluid. Checked the master and no additional leakage there, checked the slave and the reservoir and no leaks. I traced the line and near the top of the transmission there is a rubber section of line between the 2 solid lines. I looked like there was a crack and it was leaking there.
I went ahead and ordered her the Blox Competition S2000 master and braded line. I also ordered a new Exedy slave to make sure we had everything new.
I got the new parts in yesterday and the slave didn't arrive. No biggie, the one that's on the car is only about a year old and its the same as the one they were going to ship so it was fine. Got everything installed and right away I could tell the pedal was stiffer. The Competition Master has a bigger diameter and is supposed to shorten the pedal travel, and it does, the engagement point is excellent, everything installed super easy and fit perfect. I was hoping after bleeding the system the pedal would soften up but that was not the case.
The clutch and pressure plate that is on this car is unknown to me. It came with the engine and I never had a reason to remove/replace it. Its definitely an aftermarket pressure plate since the pedal was already heavy. The new competition master added a good 15-20% heaviness to the pedal, most likely it would feel awesome with a stock(ish) pressure plate. We will see what she says about it, so far no negative comment, maybe it will break in, who knows. lol. I have been driving an auto for at least the last 6 months so honestly I forgot how it should feel.
Besides the pedal being heavy(maybe I'm just weak) the car feels great. Still been super dependable daily driver. It may need a new battery, if it sits for a few days its always dead. My jump pack has turned into a permanent part of the trunk.
I wrote up a large update to this thread a few days ago and I think I got distracted and clicked on one of the bottom links without hitting reply. lol. dummy.
The civic is acting up a bit, noticed sine surging idle at times, maybe not so much at idle, the throttle will bounce a bit at low rpm. Its been very intermittent. I don't drive the car but my wife has been complaining, it happened like once out of 5 times I have ridden in the car. I went ahead and ordered some reman injectors, the ones that came on the engine were obd1 and I left them when I did the swap. I was running adapters to the OBD2 harness. The new injectors are obd2 so no need for the adapters. I also ordered some new plugs, E3 plugs just for the hell of it. I always put in NGK coppers but I figured I would try something new.
I attempted to install the Injectors but the O-rings were a very tight fit in the fuel rail. The fuel rail was generic looking aftermarket piece with no identifying marks on it, again it came with the engine. I was never really a big fan of it so I swapped in a stock rail from a LS manifold I picked up. I feel better with the OEM rail since the regulator on that aftermarket rail was unknown to me as well. Trying to install the OEM rail and studs had a lip the rail couldn't clear. So I pulled the studs off the LS manifold and everything is now seated correctly.
I cycled the power 5-6 times to prime the system and look for leaks and it was good, no issue. Fired the car up and it sounds like its running on 3 cylinders. I pulled the plug wires 1 by one and when I pulled #4 it really didn't make any change. I connected a plug to the wire on #4 and I could see a spark but honestly it looked a little weak. The plug was not wet , I should have checked it for fuel but my wife was being very impatient. At this point I'm not really sure how to move forward. I did hear a noise coming from the distributor so I went ahead and ordered a new one. I didn't have a chance to pull it off, we were in a rush to head out.
Ill try to get out and check things further today, if its the distributor at least I have another one on the way. Maybe its the injector wiring on #4.
I picked up a LS throttle body as well, I may install that as well to see if it helps smooth things out. Turns out the LS one is almost identical to the prelude, I have like 3 of those already. I also have the one that came on the engine, it took me 2 hours of searching to figure out what it was, Professional Products 69605 68mm satin throttle body. Pretty nice TB but since it didn't match up with the intake manifold I ended up replacing it with the SKunk2 70mm.
I also picked up a rear Disk setup, I am excited to get that installed, I'm not excited about bleeding the brakes or changing out the prop valve tho. haha
Ohh and I got a stock rear sway bar, hopefully it helps even tho its the diameter of a pencil.
Well crap... ordered the wrong distributor. What a pain. I was looking at the tracking trying to figure out where the darn thing was, since it was delayed and out of the corner of my eye I saw the word vtec. I checked and I ordered the wrong one. I went ahead and ordered another new one.... which may arrive before the wrong one. lol.
Well I screwed up a bit. I got the distributor in today, I had to rush and install it and the car was still running on 3 CYL. I didn't really the dist was the problem but I wanted to rule it out. I pulled the #4 injector wiring off while it was running and... nothing. So my first thought it that I have a wiring issue. I plugged in another injector and I can hear it clicking. So it didn't appear to be the wiring. I went ahead and pulled the fuel rail and I quickly noticed the rubber spacers in the injectors are pretty squished. I pulled the #4 injector and I can see that the top has been crushed a bit, nothing horrible but it was definitely pushed in too far. the rest of the injectors are the same. I guess the stock rail didn't quite sit right. I threw on some spacers on the studs, put in a new injector and fired it back up. Now its running on all 4 again. I still need to test the injector to see if it is really bad, I may not be able to exchange it since I squished the top a bit.
The car is still having the initial issue... The car surges a bit at times. I did notice that the header is pretty smashed on the bottom, my wife must have hit something pretty hard, its got an exhaust leak so its hard to tell what sounds are exhaust lead and what ones are actually bad. I thinking I may want to pull the valve cover and check the valve lash. I am going to go ahead and swap the throttle body, there really is no point to running the 70mm skunk2 one that's on there now. Maybe ill get super lucky and that will solve the issue. I'm not really sure what else to try, I suppose some new plug wires would be nice, it has NGK blue ones now but I guess they are getting a bit old.
The clutch pedal is.... out of control, its super heavy, we really need to change out the master cyl. Don't make the same mistake as me and get the competition one and a heavy clutch. Its rough.
04-03-2016, 09:40 AM
Re: 94 Coupe B20 to 99 Sedan swap. Questions
