Alright, a few weeks back I wrecked my crx and found out a bunch of stuff that I would rather not fix. I found a great deal on a 90 civic hatch. My car now is an 88 si obd1 converted. This hatch is said to be mpfi and is still obd0. I plan on swapping over everything if possible to the hatch. This means interior and wiring harness. He's including an Si harness with the hatch.

1: How hard is it to remove the dash harness? And is it possible to swap them between cars. I'd like to do this because I have a fairly low mileage odometer and id like to set up the heater controls and what not. Or would this be better to just keep the civic dash harness and repin the cluster?

2: Would it be better to use my current cabin/engine harness from the crx and swap it over to the hatch? Keep in mind, my crx has a full wire tuck. Or just use the si harness and stock cabin harness on the hatch

Im just trying to take the easiest route. My crx is pretty much unrepairable and I've got a clean slate to work on with this civic. Any help is appreciated as this will be my first "from the ground up" build. If there is anything else that im over looking, please feel free to enlighten me.

 

sooo what are you doing exactly? swapping wiring to be obd1?

 

Yes pretty much what im getting at.

If it would be easier to swap my already obd1 harness over to the civic, or just convert that harness.

 

Alright, instead of making a new thread, Ill just post it in here..

Going to be doing a crx dash swap into the civic
crx is 88, civic is 90. What would I need to swap to the civic to able to keep the heater controls in the civic.

Will the 88 dash harness plug to the 90 civic tail light harness?

 

swapping the dash itself is easy but if you want the crx climate control too than you need to do a lot of wiring...

The easiest way to swap the dash is to use the civic dash harness with the crx dash. the crx harness will NOT directly plug into your 88 harness. You must use the civics original harnesses unless you really want a mess and a headache, and then you will have tons of problems down the road trying to troubleshoot any problems you might have since nothing will match up to any wiring diagrams in chilton, helms or whatnot. If you swap the climate control, then you need to swap the whole heater core bc the crx is motorized and the civic is cable driven. that mean you have to wire the controls from scratch bc just swapping the harnesses will not work. the civic was never meant to have an electric heater core in it so it will be tough.

I did the opposite, i put a civic climate control and heater core into my crx

let me know if you need any more help. its pretty straight forward and a lot easier to just go and DO IT rather than talk about it and confuse yourself more...there are too many people here that ask endless questions and then never actually try anything. But the dash swap is pretty simple and straight forward, just use all the civic harnesses and you'll be fine.

PS you can actually take apart the cluster and swap the odometers with other gauge pods from 88-91. I did this too to keep the exact mileage on my car, im proud of the 300,000 mile crx

Its always going to be easier to convert the civic harness to obd1 than trying to swap over your crx harness. IMO i wouldnt even bother trying the swap, i just convert the civics right away

 

I agree with JLK, all you will really need to cut from harnesses is the injectors, distributor, and maybe the starter. It should be easy, but before you install the crx dash be sure to check your heater core/flush it/replace it (they are really cheap) because if it ever goes out and you live where it is cold you will have to pretty much take the dash out again. (I really wish I had done this )

 

I live in Dayton too. It's kinda nice to know that I am not the only Daytonian who is a Honda enthusiast. I would love to see pics of the 88 CRX dash in the 90 Civic for that I have an '88 Crx as well

 

I pretty much have the jist for swapping dashes.

I have a full uncut si harness that came with the came with the civic, ill probably convert that to obd1. Thats not my issue

The civic was a DX, so it doesnt have a tach, the crx has a tach. I was going to swap the cluster over and wasnt sure if it would be easier to swap the dash harness to the civic or rewire the civics dash harness to work with the crx cluster

I have full intentions on completing this swap.

I think at this point, I might just live with out heat because I have an accord I can DD.

Any other help on this matter is appreciated