So i bought a 1990 civic hatch on 11/22/15 i drove it home, used it as a daily for a bit, the motor ended up going. I knew nothing about this car, did some research and found out it was a d15b8 block with d16z6 vtec head. I wanna swap a newer less mile d15b7 non vtec. I have the harness and ecu from it. What will i have to do to get it running after i drop in the motor? Im very new to this whole car thing. Also i dont wanna use the harness that came in it cause it is all tore up and janky. Thanks for helping

 

1. Usually people adapt the cars harness to the engine. Not the other way around.

2. Look at the following connections:
a. ECU (the car should have Vtec, which could have an upgraded OBD0 or a OBD1)
b. Distributor connections change between years.
c. Alternator connections change between years.
d. You will have an extra Vtec connection on your engine harness.
e. Depending on the exact engine you may have to relocate wires to reach new locations of sensors.

No-one probably can give you straight answer unless you buy a new custom made harness. So good luck.

 

Easy to do, have had the same issue with wanting to use a certain harness regardless of the car. Most people don't do this because it is time consuming, headache.... doesn't matter. All you need is the wiring diagram from your '90 hatch (engine and ecu plugs), then get the wiring harness from the 92-95 dx civic (engine and ecu plugs). You can use an obd0-obd1 jumper harness or get obd1 plugs and rewire at ecu. Basically make sure that the ecu wires go to the corresponding locations on the motor and also that you wire from the ecu plugs into the interior under dash harness to their proper locations. You will need to convert also from mechanical speed sensor to electrical vss, so get an EK cluster with pigtails and look for the diagram to convert it over(insanely easy). What I've done in the past is go into Microsoft excel and create a side by side chart of obd0 ecu pinouts vs. obd 1 ecu pinouts vs. where to move to. This may seem like a lot, but patience is the key to wiring.

 

This is not true. You can keep your mechanical, or whatever you currently have. A mechanical vss is converted to electrical signal at the cluster.

 

just curious why you dont want to do a whole z6 swap? the blocks can be picked up really cheap and it should have less miles that a d15 block

 

Yeah your right my fault... The mechanical piece/ wire should bolt right into whatever transmission your swapping too.