Ok, i bought a 92 civic hatchback with a b18a1 swap that had a huge hole in the block. Took the car to a friend who swapped in a b18b1. The car has felt sluggish since the day of the swap, about 30-40 days ago. Its a b18b1 with a intake manifold off a b18a1 and the block is stock + 99-00 civic si pistons. Here is a list of my problems:

1. Bad gas milage.. I filled up and managed to get 170 miles until it was about to die on empty.

2. Feels sluggish/no power.. It does not pick up when i want to get on it, i mean you can get it going, but not the full potential of what it should be doing. Kinda bogs out when going once in a while, not all the time.

3. Bad idle.. It will idle high around 1200rpm sometimes or drop to around 500rpm and idle, or some days it will be nice and idle around 700rpm.

4. Dies.. My car likes to die at random when i come to a idle, maybe 1 out of 20 times i come to a stop. And atleast 1 out of every 2 times i pump gas, i will get back in my car and it will not start for a good 10 minutes. This only happens after i pump gas i noticed, a lot actually.

5. Random CEL.. I will be driving down the road and the check engine light will come on, maybe 1 or 2 times a week, and the car will stutter and not go no matter how much gas i give it. Than i pull over, turn the car off and it will start back up usually after a few tries, and i never have time to check the code because the CEL is gone within seconds after i pull over.

6. Black/grey smoke.. It shoots out HUGE clouds of black/dark grey smoke when i shift at a high rpm, usually from 3rd to 4th.


Main problem i am trying to solve is that my car is running like ****. I took it to a local non-performance mechanic shop that we know, but the guys said they dont like to touch swapped cars because they deal with just stock/normal cars. He said since it looked like certain thnigs were missing and blah and that he did not know much about how to work on these cars. I want to take it to a performance shop here, but i have been out of a job so its kinda tough to get the money to pay them right now, but are there anythings that you guys can think of to solve my problems? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. I did search too by the way.

 

What code is the ecu flashing? Sounds like it's running VERY rich. That would explain the black smoke, poor idle, and poor fuel mileage. What ecu are you running? I would first figure out what code it's giving and then go from there.

Good luck.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by mnskateboarder &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> i never have time to check the code because the CEL is gone within seconds after i pull over.
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does it sound like its rich? how do you go about getting it to not run rich. its just a stock 92 integra ecu.

 

The car could be running rich for a variet of reasons:

1. ECU running in "limp" mode
2. Bad injectors
3. Bad O2 sensor

Check to see what code the ecu is giving.