hi all, well to make it short and sweet....i have a 98 civic cx hatch with a b16a2 motor, after a recent failure in my old harness i got a new one from a 96 obd2 non vtec civic plugged it in ran the wires and the car would start then die out if i wasnt feathering the gas....so now im completely stuck and lost and have tried searching everything, so now im going to go pick up another wiring harness in hopes it will be easier since its from a 97ex so theres little to no wiring any help or advice would be awesome

 

Before you go buy another wiring harness, are there any CELs?

 

yes there is but im new to reading them an im really bad at it i will try and read them if not take a small video and post them

 

First, when doing engine swaps in a '96-00 civic, it is always best to use the same year and model engine harness for the chassis that you have and adapt it to the engine. The obvious giveaway that you have it wrong is to look at the large green dash crossover plug... you should have an equal number of wires on BOTH sides of the plug. If not, you are missing wires, have wires that fail to make crucial connections, or have wires in incorrect locations.

Second, it sounds as though you have an IACV issue since you are having difficulty keeping the car running at idle... changing the plug from 3-wire to 2-wire at the intake manifold end is only half of the battle... you must also move the blue/black wire at the ECU end over two spaces.

 

i moved the correct wires to the correct spots, but my iacv was already a 2 wire set up which i found weird