So my motor failed. A family friend offered to use his discount and experience as a mechanic to buy an imported motor and install it for me. Except he has never worked on a honda before... So now that the motor is in there are some problems. I don't want to immediately point my finger at him if there may be another explanation, some personal experience would be much appreciated :-)

1- the idle is facked up. Sits between 1200-1400 and just jumps around there. Plus when driving the motor lurches whenever you let off out push down on the gas. Through all rpms. The only code being thrown is for the IACV but I haven't gotten time to clean it myself yet.

2- he did the timing "by ear" because he is a "professional". But he said is not perfect because the idle is not right.

3- it sounds like the throw out bearing is bad, but he changed the clutch. Push the clutch in, it's quiet, let it off and there is a constant "ssshhhhhhh" sound.

4-THE TRANNY IS LOUD!! And rough. Is this at all normal for japanese transmissions? I can feel lots of vibration and what seems like generally unhealthy stuff going on via the shift **** and it makes me weary. Both the motor and tranny have a 90 day warranty.

I went to clean the IACV just now and noticed it is way different than the USDM part that was on my old Y8. The motor came with the Japanese harness but it is plugged into my American ECU. Could this be a problem?

It drives fine (minus the problems above) and I was really surprised how much stronger VTEC is on this motor. But I'm not pleased with these results as you can imagine. Any advice from those of you who have experience with japanese motors would be great!

*****************UPDATE***************

instead of reading everything here are my new facts.

turns out he didn't buy a D16Y8 like he said, it is a D16A.
which would explain the "extra sensors" thing. Running the car with the IACV un plugged changes nothing, which means it is not communicating with my Y8 ecu. So now I'm at a cross roads. I have two options, either switch over the entire wire harness and intake manifold which I have in my garage (the dizzy too?) or try to get my hands on some sort of computer system than will run this engine cleanly.

will ANY piggy back system be able to communicate with the japanese IACV via my Y8 ecu? or will i still run into the same problem of my ecu is looking for one sensor and it is getting info from another? Is my only option either get the stock D16A ecu or upgrade to a stand alone system? I emailed greddy about the E-manage Ultimate to see if it will work...but haven't heard back from them yet.

remember my motor is the JDM D16A SOHC VTEC and its OBDII. So if I were going to tune on anything other than a piggy back I would have to get a jumper harness too.

 

Fix your IACV - that's what's causing your hunting idle.

He's correct. You can't properly set ignition timing with a fucked up idle.

Foot off clutch noise means it's your input shaft bearing, not your throwout bearing. That's inside the transmission. Combine that with #4, and it sounds like you need a new transmission. No, that noise and grinding and feeling **** on the shift **** is not normal.

Did you use the OEM wiring harness, or the harness that came with it?

 

WOw sounds like you got your self a BAD situation

first things first dont drive the car park it. second find someone who knows what the hell their doing ask around get different opinions tell you find the right guy, your motors in the worst parts over now find someone who knows what the heck he is doing good luck report back let us know whats going on

 

That was what I was suspecting...but wanted a second opinion, thank you. And no I did not use the stock harness. He used the harness that came with the motor but it's still using my ECU. He mentioned there was some extra sensors?? But didn't specify where. Which doesn't make sense since its the harness that came with the facking motor...

I'm taking the car back to him. Grand total is 3500 including the price of the motor and tranny. So I'd say not too terribly bad...but still not close to cheap enough to leave me picking up the pieces like this. Thanks for the replies!!

 

Can you post the block code and some pics of the extra sensors?

 

3500?!? YIKES

I paid 2300 for a complete swap, 5 speed...new rackandpinion ...brakes

 

Some points of note:

• JDM D16Y8s or equivalents don't exist
• You can't use the JDM harness in a USDM car without having a bunch of issues.
• The input shaft bearing (or one of the other 4 bearings in the trans) is bad, which is further indicated in your point about the trans being rough.
• The idle problem you're having is from trying to use a 3 wire rotary style IACV with an ECU looking for a 2 wire linear IACV

What you can do is swap over your original intake manifold and throttlebody along with the engine harness and it should solve your idle issues. The trans either needs to come apart or if it's under warranty exchanged.

 

is it possible your car is in limp mode? can you get into vtec?
Was it a direct swap or did you go from like d15 to b18 Give us more info on the parts ect.

 

Thank you so much for your precise answer!! It took me two days to figure out what you just typed out without ever looking at the car.

It is actually a D16A. And yes the IACV are totally different. I tried running the car with the IACV unplugged and it made no difference. I just called the guy and he said he won't do it, at least not unless I pay him for all the labor...I don't like this guy. So I guess I get to swap the harness on my new motor myself. Do you think getting an ecu for my ACTUAL motor would solve anything? It is the complete motor and harness, so the only American part left is the computer. Just a thought, instead of using my old *** manifold and swapping everything around/potentially breaking something due to lack of experience... I can't think of anything on the car that would interfere with the new ecu. But I could be wrong.



As far as the transmission I will go to the supplier to try and get it replaced since it is clearly fucked. Thank you again!

 

if it is possible I would like to keep the intake manifold and wire harness all together. simply because my old parts have 230,000 miles on them and these have around 40,000. injectors, wiring clips, hoses etc. I updated my original post but I'll ask again. If I am having this communication issue between ecu and the IACV now, is there any piggy back system that can help it? I'm thinking if I wanted to do piggy back I would first have to buy the D16A ecu and then work from there, right? otherwise it has to be stand alone or switch everything over to the old parts, which I'm worried won't last nearly as long.

 

no VTEC works fine and it is actually a D16A, but still runs on my Y8 ecu.

 

I used to do a lot of Honda engine swaps, also worked at a Honda dealership for a little while. After a while you start to know this stuff very well.

Any chance you can get a couple of pics of the engine? D16A came in a few variations, but I'm pretty sure you have the OBD2 version.

Do you need to pass emissions? If so no you can't, a JDM ECU wont communicate with a scan tool. If not, yes you can. Although I'm not quite sure how your friend used the engine harness. JDM harnesses are almost a mirror image of a USDM harness. They don't normally fit at all without a bunch cutting and hacking and they never fit right since the harness is meant to pass through the firewall on the opposite side of the car.

Make sure the new trans is stamped B000 next to the transmission fill plug, this is the short geared EX trans (unless you get really unlucky and end up with one from an HX) A000 is the long geared CX/DX/LX trans.

You can keep the new injectors and use the old manifold. The manifold is basically just a block of cast aluminum with no moving parts, they don't really go bad. Hoses you can usually swap.

No, there's no piggyback system you could use for that.

 

Here is a quick video I took of the idle bouncing and just a close up on the motor. Sorry for the poor lighting. Would and OBDII motor even run if plugged into the ecu for my Y8? The only code it's throwing is the IACV.

 

Yes, it will run fine other than the IACV code and bouncing idle.

You can also drill and tap the back of the new intake manifold to accept a 5 speed Y8 IACV but you'll most likely have to remove the manifold to do it, you wont really have enough room in the car without a right angle drill, even then it's pretty easy to drill the holes crooked when you can't really see what you're doing.

Personally, if it was mine I'd swap the manifold, throttlebody and wiring harness over from the original engine. This way everything works, the ECU will communicate with a scan tool (important for emissions, or even just if you're selling the car and someone wants to scan it (I always take a scanner with me when I'm looking at a vehicle) Make sure you order gaskets from Honda (don't use felpro here, they use a thick graphite gasket that fits like crap, the real gasket is a nice paper version)

Then you can sell the new manifold and throttlebody to someone with a D16Y7 as it's a bolt on upgrade for them (the Y7 also uses the 3 wire IACV but it's got a weird upturned manifold) List it as an automatic D16Y8 manifold as it's exactly the same as one and people are more familiar with that terminology.

Btw, I can hear that bearing, it sounds terrible.

 

Have him swap the intake manifold. How did he do the mechanical timing? All timing marks have to be aligned on the crank and cam.

 

By rotating the distributor slightly I believe. Dunno why he even messed with it in the first place since it should have been fine. He didn't touch the motor...

 

Yeah I'm just going to do exactly that and swap over the injectors on my own time. I just need to have a functional car to get to work! You are a good among men:-)

 

That's ignition timing, not mechanical timing. Mechanical timing is set via the timing belt.

 

I know that's what I'm saying, it has a stock cam gear and he didn't change the timing belt or anything. so unless he just decided to advance it by a tooth on the belt for no good reason...he only messed with the ignition.

 

On that note, if you didn't replace the timing belt when you put the engine in you might want to do that. I always put a new timing belt on before I drop an engine in unless I know for a fact it's nowhere near due for replacement.

 

Yeah I was dreading doing that too. I pretty much got raped on this whole deal. Almost 4,000 bucks to simply install a motor. That still needs a fair share of work done. FML

 

GUESS WHAT!!! the head gasket, oil pan seal and main seal are all leaking. head gasket is the worst and there is oil pouring into my coolant... back to the beginning.

My brother's best friend has been the master technician at the local Honda dealership for 4 years and he came over to lend a hand. As we were swapping the harness and intake manifold we asked him to look at the whole swap and point out any and all mistakes of my "mechanic" and then write out a price quote of what it should have been. He said it would have been cheaper to have the dealership do the swap as far as labor cost. I'm going back to the motor supplier to see about just getting all my money back and giving their **** motor and tranny back. I'm taking all the receipts and my quote from the master tech and get my money back from that crook. The way I see it I have to redo EVERY SINGLE THING all over again. and since he won't do it he can pay me back for doing his job for him. if he refuses I'm taking him to small claims court.

There are so many problems with this car and many many hours of work that need to go into it before it is anywhere near reliable. at this point I'm just looking for a new car and I'll try to get as much money back from all this bullshit as I can. FACK!

 

If you paid 4 grand simply for labor you got royally screwed. If the price of the engine and trans was in there too I'd still say you were overcharged. A D-series swap is around $1000 - $1200 from the importer by the time you get it with the shipping. http://www.jdmsource.ca/products.php...64irfqebdspbc3 (I couldn't find an OBD2 D-series swap so there's an OBD1 D15B Vtec swap simply for illustration purposes)

The blown headgasket is obviously a problem. The oil pan gasket and front and rear main seals are kind of expected to leak on a 14 - 18 year old engine. I always replace the front and rear crank seals, cam seals, timing belt, water pump and distributor O-ring on any JDM swap I install. The engines themselves are normally good, but they are old and rubber dries out. The oil pan gasket I'll replace on an as needed basis since it's easy enough to do in the car.

Most of the importers are pretty good about trying to make a situation right. Generally they'll an engine or trans if it's bad as long as it's within the warranty period. That said I've been lucky enough that every JDM swap I've been involved with was good so I've never had to deal with trying to send back a junk engine. Most of the importers are honestly really good, the only one that really stands to mind as being bad is Tiger Japanese in Toronto.

I'm not sure what kind of shape the rest of the car is in but with a good engine and trans the car should work well and provide reliable service for a long time.

 

Motor was 700, trans was 500. The total bill was 3600. There wasn't any extra parts or services done at all. He simply dropped the motor in without touching it and plugged it in. Thats it.

The parts dealer won't take the engine back and I'm having to really argue with them over the warranty. It was done a week ago and has a 90 day warranty.

Other than the drive train it needs new brakes all around, New tires, tie rod ends, power steering pump, cruise control unit, stereo and wiring needs to be completely redone, two struts are blown, passenger side window doesn't roll down(regulator), no AC piping or components, windshield is cracked to ****, the welds on the front cross member have separated from hitting speed bumps. 2-3,000 in body work to get it straight again.

It was beat up when I bought it and definitely hasn't gotten any better. I can't do all this stuff in any sort of decent time frame plus I work two jobs and need my car all day every day.

 

$700 for a JDM D-series is pretty well right on the money if it didn't need to be shipped, especially if it was a cash deal. $500 for the trans is a bit steep. Usually they're more in the $300 range for a JDM D-series trans. In terms of used USDM, I wouldn't pay more than $150 for one unless the seller can prove there's nothing wrong with it, or that it's been rebuilt properly. I got a lot of these transmissions for nothing and some for very little money ($3 - $40) over the years, almost all of them needing something. $2400 for labor though is way out to lunch. Even at $100/h shop rate for 8 hours it still only amounts to $800 and you can definitely knock out a D-series engine/trans swap in less time than that.

The good news, if there is any to be had, is that the trans you have probably only needs an input shaft bearing and seal (around $30 for both) if the importer wont take it back.

It kind of sounds this this should have been junked before the engine swap ever happened honestly. A lot of that stuff isn't a big deal, even the subframe isn't hard to replace and they're cheap enough used, but the bodywork it needs is basically the value of the car if it ran well and didn't need as much bodywork. They're great cars, but it sounds like you got yourself a very abused/neglected example.