Hello everyone. This is my first post on honda-tech. I just recently purchased an 89 CRX Si shell and now I'm trying to put a D16A6 motor in it. I've got the motor in, everything connected up on the harness that I got with the motor. However, there are two connectors over near the master cylinder which have me bumfuzzled. I don't know where they are suppose to connect. I'm not getting spark right now, but I'm getting 12v to the distributor and various points on the ECU. Are these plugs related to my no-spark issue? Thanks alot, I'm sure I will be asking a ton more questions before I get the car back running. By the way, it's going to be a Lemon's or Chump racing car. Once I get it running, I'll be back on here to see what I can eliminate to clean up the engine bay and declutter the wiring. If there are any other people near the Shelby, North Carolina area who might have an engine I could look at to compare my setup with, that would be awesome. Also, I tried looking at the FAQ area for the wiring plug info, but most of the threads were so old that the links were dead.



This is the mystery connector located near the master cylinder.





Aren't these the wires which should be going to the ECU? This is what my injectors, distributor, alternator, temp senders, oil pressure sender, etc... connects to.<br/>





Also, not sure where this plug goes. It is on drivers side as well, beside the resistor box.





Done a little bit of lightening on the interior.





Stripped rear interior as well along with all wiring.





Bringing it home last week.





D16A6 before installation.

 

I've been reading on some of the racing forums and they tend to say that the Honda's have a higher incident of head gasket failures in racing environments. Any suggestions other than making sure I've got a good clean radiator and cooling system? Is there a better head gasket material than OEM which is more resistant to leakage? They say you can only use water, no anti-freeze, could that create more head gasket issues? If the water starts boiling in the block, the pressure has to go somewhere. Thanks.

 

Check the rules to see if you can run water wetter. Anti freeze is slippery so they don't want spills of that on the track. Water wetter is usually ok to run and will keep the temps under control.

The connector you have coming out of your firewall is an 89~91 8-pin round plug.
The 6 pin connector on your engine harness is from an 88 which only had the 6-pin.
Simple as that. The one oddball year engine harness.

The 88 did not have a IACV (called EACV on 88-91) so it has 2 wires less in the harness.

You can get the connector and wire it appropriately omitting the two wires and running an 88 Si ECU.

Or, you can get the proper 89-91 intake manifold, matching 89-91 SI ECU, and add wires to make use of the EACV.

Additionally, (information for other people reading) the chassis may be an 88~91 HF or 89~91 Si to have that 8-pin plug.
The pinouts for the 8-pin plug differ between HF and SI.
You can plug an HF or SI engine harness into the chassis plug as long as it is pinned correctly and the EGR/EACV power wire is routed to the proper place.

Take a look at this pinout, Rig99.
This is why your injectors are not firing!

 

Thanks for your quick answer 4drEF. That explains a lot. I went out this morning and depinned the 6 wire engine harness and plugged the wires into the 8 pin round chassis harness. I wound up with two unused pins 5 and 6, one for the IACV and the FICV. After mucking around with some other things, and finding out that my main PGM relay wasn't engaging when the switch was on (bad ground, ran a ground wire directly from the relay to chassis) I was able to get the CEL light to come on, as well as some engine error codes. I got a 6, 10, 15, and 20. I still have NO spark. The 6 and 10 might be related, possibly a bad wire or something. According to what I've read, those two shouldn't cause a No start situation. Code 20 is engine load. Could there be some wiring differences between the Si harness and the factory harness which is confusing the ECU? The code 15 is an igniter related code. I measured between the terminals on the connector going to the distributor and got about 340 ohms between each pair. I read somewhere that 350-700 was good, so I'm assuming I'm within the ball park. Measured between the primary side of the coil and got .9 ohms. Measured from primary + to secondary winding and got about 12k ohms. Measured voltage going to coil with switch on and got 12 volts at the + side of the primary. I saw on another post that there might be some other wiring differences between the 88 engine harness and the other years chassis harness. I'm attaching a pic of my VIN to verify that I'm reading it correctly. The 9th digit is a K which should be 1989, right? Also attaching some other pics to see if anything looks totally obvious to some of the more seasoned veterans out there. Also, since this is going to be a race track only vehicle, not registered, will I be ok to eliminate the IACV and FICV all together? I realize the idle might have to be manually adusted via the brass screw on the TB, but will having those disconnected throw ECU codes and affect performance? Thanks again for the help!



Was told this was a 89 Si motor.





ECU that came with motor





Vin number. Should be Japan, ED9= 1988 CRX 1.6 engine, 3= 2 door hatchback, 6= HF, DX or Si, and K= 1989?? So is it an 88 or 89? Still no way of knowing if it was a HF, DX or Si from the factory.





The igniter wire should be the white wire in this harness on passenger side. I saw somewhere that they had to move it to the driver side, but I think that was for putting an Si into an HF chassis. I don't have to do anything with these wires do I?

 

I noticed that some of the colored wires don't line up in the connectors on the passenger side shock tower. For example on the 6 pin connector, the blue/yellow, blue/green wires line up with the red/white and red/yellow wires. That seems strange to me. Do these need to be unpinned and repinned elsewhere?



Blue wires on right side don't have blue wires on mating plug.





The red wires mate to the blue wires on the previous picture.

 

OK after looking through several pages of wiring diagrams, it seems that I need to go to the connectors at the passenger side shock tower and remove the red/white, red/yellow, blue/yellow, and blue/white wires from the 6 pin rectangular plug, and plug them into the round 14 pin plug, and take the wires removed from the 14 pin round plug and put them into the correct place on the rectangular 6 pin plug.
Does this sound right? Basically, make sure that the same color wire is plugged into each side of the connectors.

 

The 88 is wired different. You wI'll have to do some wire swapping. With the 14pin plug

 

Yes I found that our the hard way. I finally got spark and got it to crank after switching a few more wires, but my fuel pump is messed up and I had to just drip some fuel into the intake. When I get back in town I'm going to drop the tank clean it and replace the fuel pump. That hopefully will fix it and get rid of my code 16. I am still showing a code 20. I might still have a wiring issue with the plug. Can you disable the module for the electrical load monitor?

 

i'm in about the same boat, only I have an 88si, I cant find a wiring guide only for the 88, there are either a lot of diferent small wiring differences or someone did something crazy to my car.

hope you resolved your issues, im on that same six pin connection, only mine has red/black with one yellow black and one red white, looks just like the plug that originally went to the resistor box.

so strange.