Hey guys I need your help and rather quickly I want to have a solution to this issue asap. I have my 98 prelude with a jdm h22a euro-r swap in it. It has my old h22a4 engine harness, I just bought the euro-r PCD ecu with a rywire obd2a to obd2b ecu jumper. Everything plugs in just fine in the ecu area as it should. So I go to turn on the car yesterday and immediately there's a check engine light as before I try to run the car, and I checked it with my scan tool and its a code 21 - VTEC Spool Solenoid Valve - P1253 (system malfunction). So I am asking do I or should I replace the entire vtec solenoid with new gaskets or try to troubleshoot the one I have or is it toast? Please help if you can thanks.

 

Clean it out completely. Clean the plugs, check the gasket.

 

 

I will but the issue is so bad to where my car doesn't want to stay running at all, it is in limp mode I believe so I really don't know what to do at this point besides clean the vtec solenoid and or replace it.

 

i found this

https://honda-tech.com/forums/honda-civic-del-sol-1992-2000-1/how-fix-check-engine-problems-2727182/

 

thanks but that doesn't help me out in this situation. I almost want to say it is a bad ecu but if it was would it be still if the check engine light comes on for two seconds and then goes off when I first turn the ignition key to the ON position? I thought that this meant your ecu is fine and in working order? Hey I fixed my CEL code 21 my damn vtec wire on my engine harness broke in two so I just fixed that and no more code...but my engine still runs like crap making me believe the car is in LIMP mode and my ecu is bad.

 

BUMP need your help guys can anyone tell me what they think is wrong judging by the video, is it an ecu issue or something to do with the a sensor?

 

Is there black smoke coming out the back when it is running ???
Do you have a scan tool that shows real time data on it ??? If so, what are your TPS and MAP values ???

 

No black smoke or anything coming out when engine is running...I do have a scan tool that shows real time data I will grab the tps and map values in a bit and see what they show even though the engine just dies out as soon as I take my foot off the gas pedal and mostly it dies even if I have my foot on the pedal. Here's another video of it trying to run.

 

well I started up my car using my p5m-l03 obd2a ecu as I have always ran on my euro-r engine and it runs the car good, but I went to run the PCD ecu and the car actually bounced off 0rpm to 200rpm and didn't die out immediately .
The map for the p5m ecu was at 27 and the tps 9.0% and did not fluctuate when I gave it a little gas.
The euro-r PCD ecu, the map was at 42 and the tps fluctuated between 9.0-16%, I don't know what this means but obviously my car doesn't run right with the euro-r ecu.

 

Almost always the issue is that the pin isn't staying put inside the ecu connector. Go back to the connector, pry open the back of the connector, slide the pin in, close it and clear the code and check again. If it's still bad I suppose it could be the solenoid but I rarely hear of a bad solenoid.

I would also recheck the wiring again, I suppose you could have something plugged in wrong or something open somewhere. I would check continuity from the solenoid connector all the way back to the ecu connector.

However I was under the impression that only '96 and '97 were obd2a. not '98's. I guess I could be wrong on that.

 

Thanks for the reply but my solenoid issue or code was fixed yesterday. All that was need was my vtec green/yellow wire was ripped in half from me switches ecu's so many times so that's no longer a problem. I am just worried that I got a bad ecu because as you can see in the videos this car runs like crap.

 

I think I have figured out what is going on with this JDM PCD ecu. I go to check to see if it will read or spit codes at me if I unplug the EGR, map, and tps and I got nothing but the same p1253 vtec system malfunciton.I reset the ecu everytime to clear the codes that were stored. I know this is a jdm ecu but why would it give me the same code over and over again if I have unplugged different items and not even touch the vtec system? I tried the paperclip jumper trick at the two wire blue plug and I tried with my obd2 scantool and yet same code as result everytime. Does this mean my ecu is bad?

 

Sounds like it.

 

Yes that's what I was thinking too a bad ecu...there really isn't any real way to test it if its bad. The only thing I could do is buy another euro-r ecu and try it out. I just would be really mad if I bought another and yet the issue still exists. That's another $150 out of my pocket

 

They say if the ecu goes bad it normally will have a problem pushing out reference volts to the various sensors.

You really can't go wrong with a p13 ecu however the pcd ecu might not have an immobilizer in it which is why you're using it.

 

I definitely believe this because I am getting crazy readings from my obd2 scantool from the livedata section for my map and tps sensors. I guess my best bet is to purchase another pcd ecu and go from there I really want to use it instead of an obd1 chipped ecu. And yes the euro-r ecu does not come with an immobilizer.