So I recently purchased my girl a beater. It is an automatic 97 EX. The owner is like 65 years old and just used it as his daily beater also. Well long story short I decided to clean her up and pressure washed the engine bay. Low and behold it has a D15B swap and I can tell came from a yard as the valve cover has writing all over it. I had assumed it was a d16y8 because it had a bad vtec solenoid the day we bought it. I replaced it and the CEL went away.

Is this engine a large downgrade from the d16y8? LOL Ive never owned a single cam car and it just seems like a dog. I have a shop which is going to do an auto to manual swap for her as the auto tranny is shifting hard. What 5 speed manual ECU will she need? Will a 96-98 EX 5 speed harness work? Ha Im shocked this car passed cali smog. I thought the D15B was the older SOHC VTEC out of JDM cars.

 

What D15B is it? There's more than one. Post pictures and also mention what ECU it's running.

 

It can only be two of the four, it has vtec solenoid(s). So either it's the d15b vtec or teh d15b dual vtec.

You can't exactly replace a vtec solenoid on a non vtec d15b or the carb d15b. I also don't think you can replace a single solenoid on the dual solenoid motors.

I suspect OP probably would have mentioned if it he discovered dual solenoids. Did you find only one solenoid or two OP?

ECU is important to know, it could be why it passed cali inspection.

 

Is there any good reason to have a guessing game in a tech forum?

 

Do we have tech forum rules here or do you want to make them up as you go? PM me if you have questions for me.