Ok so I took the car over to the ref station near my house to have them inspect the swap and the overall result was good.

The ref was happy with everything in the car and it even passed smog and the only thing he wanted me to do was get a usdm p72-a01 ecu not the jdm p72-00 before he would pass the car.

Yesterday I picked one up at a shop about an hour away just to find out that it was throwing a hard cel which I returned today and then the guy at that shop recommended another shop but when I got there they only had a ecu for obd2 gsr. Figured at that point since I had already called six places I would just pull one from ebay.

Now my question is since the car passed smog with the stock ecu for the motor why would the ref be concerned about the computer that much? When I swap the usdm ecu I will still have to mess with some of the sensors to keep it from throwing a cell.

 

He will fail it. Did he give you the prinout from the smog check where you passed everything except the ecu? If it says failed than no. you have to do the test again with the proper ecu.

 

Yeah I got the slip, but he was the one that said it wouldn't pass and marked it as modified vs a fail.

problem is finding a decent p72 that isn't messed up. I grabbed one off ebay but it won't show up for a few days. Hopefully the third one is decent.

 

The JDM OBD2 ECUs won't connect with a code reader and aren't setup with Most US emissions components such as the CKF and secondary 02.

 

what code was the other p72 throwing? and what makes you think that the ecu was faulty?

 

Well it is an OBD1 jdm GSR, the motor came with the JDM P72-00 ecu and that one wasn't throwing any codes.

I swapped in the P72-a01 which we knew the check engine would come on cause the motor was jdm and the usdm ecu couldn't read everything it wanted to know. But when I put the jumper wire in to pull the codes the CEL stayed on so i figured it was me not getting the jumper in right so I did it again and still the cel stayed on.

Called a friend and he told me it was bad just thru my explanation and the guys I bought it from agreed.

That ecu also had previously been chipped so the guy figured it was questionable as he didn't know what the previous owner had done to it when it was in his possession.

 

Ok, I got another P72-a01 going to put it in the car and see...

 

Ok i just put the P72-a01 in the car and this one worked. No issues with the CEL and i just talked to my mechanic about if i needed to swap any parts to make it work with the JDM GSR and he said that changing parts like the vtec solinode only applies with 96 and newer motors.

Now back to the ref.

 

And finally after a bit of work i have gotten my BAR from the ref here in cali!

So when i took it in the second time with all the right parts and everything passed with flying colors except for the smog! "first try was fine" This time it failed NOX horribly at the 15 mph test sitting at a nice 1700. So he told me to fix it and bring it back!

Took it to the local smog shop that i use all the time and the guy there was pretty irritated when he saw the numbers as he said the Ref ran the test cold and thats why the number was so high on the test. He told me to go back and have them run it again but when i got there and explained it to the ref he understood the problem but told me to make an appointment again.

Third time i take it in with the Ref just going to do the smog and he let me run it around for 5 mins prior to the test and he setup everything so it was ready as soon as i got there. This test passed! NOX at 15mph was 0 on the sniffer and just 22 at the 25 mph test.

Yay i got a nice BAR sticker and rolled out!

 

Dang. Such a hassle. Down here in conservative Florida, I can roll black smoke and burn oil all day and they don't care.

 

Congrats man!