okay, so heres the deal on what happened. about a month ago, i paid for a ls/vtec swap to be done on my 98 civic ex by a shop. i have a gsr head with a gsr tranny on a b18b1 block and everything is pretty much stock except i have jdm oversized pr3 cams with pr3 pistons. so far, i have been running on a stock p28 ecu on a obd2a to obd1 conversion harness and the shop told me that the car is running rich and that i would need to get the ecu chipped and tuned and that i would have to break my car in before i can do that. my car dies out every now and then out of nowhere, especially if i let go of gas while the car is still in gear. my car is at about 1800 miles now, but the shop shut down...so i'm kind of stuck now lol. what exactly do i have to do just to be able to not have to worry about my car dying out or running rich? thanks in advance

 

well its doing that because u have a unchipped p28 running it

 

assuming they did the work correctly

 

take it to a new shop and get it tuned with a chipped ecu

 

the shop that did my swap did a pretty crappy job. i can see that there is a oil leak on the tranny area, where the sticker that says y80 is. but either way, is there a way to see if it's just the ecu that is the problem? would i be able to just use a regular obd2a p72 ecu and take off the obd2a to obd1 harness temporarily to check if the ecu is the problem without causing any damage to the engine, since i am supposedly running obd1 right now or is there a cheaper ecu i can use? im trying not to buy an obd1 p72 ecu because they're hard to find and expensive lol. kinda out of cash after the swap haha. also, if the ecu isn't the problem, what else could it be that's causing these problems? sorry about all the questions, but as you guys can see, i got ripped off. thanks again

 

my 99 si ran better with the stock ecu then with an unchipped obd1 ecu

and most ls/vtec's leak a little bit

 

first of all, you cant blame the shop for your oil leak problem. unless of course you paid for a complete gasket kit including the distributor o-ring and the vtec solenoid gaskets..(which is most likely your problem) second, your car dying out is most likely the result of not being tuned.. pull out your spark plugs see what they look like.. that would be my first step.

 

i pulled the spark plugs out and they look fine. also, they are oem spark plugs. would changing my spark plugs to the ngk ones like recommended in the "reliable ls/vtec guide" be a solution? right now, i think im running on some random oem spark plugs that the shop threw together

 

if they werent soaked with fuel then your problem with the car dying out is not because your running rich.. next step would be to check the injectors, see if they are all spraying. im guessing you dont have a CEL? you can also try pulling the distributor cap off.. you said you have an oil leak over there so its possible oil got inside the dizzy..causing you to lose spark.

 

where does your car idle at?

 

just save yourslef the hastle, but a chrome or hondata , get it tuned .. it'll run alot better wont run rich all of the time.

 

how does the hondata and chrome work? do i just buy the program and someone installs it and thats it? or is it a lot more complicated?

 

Once you have it, the shop needs to install it and tune it.