I recently just finished swapping a z6 into my '97 DX. The engine is completely stock as far as I know. I seem to have issues especially while taking off while still in low RPM's and when cruising in 5th. When I take off in first gear, the car bogs down and seems to have no low end power until it hits a point (from what I've seen with similar issues being at 3000rpm.. I don't have a tachometer so I can't be sure about where the point it is with my car) where it seems to gain power and shoots me forward. This happens in every gear but isn't as noticeable in 3-5th gear. Going into 2nd, it is very similar to first gear (with the lack of low end). I have to wait a couple seconds until it actually kicks in. Sometimes if I shift to 2nd a little too early, I can have my foot to the floor and it'll still take time to climb up to that point and then finally shoot forward. When I am cruising on the highway in 5th gear, it's difficult to maintain a constant speed as if I am running in the lower RPM's the car will buck and isn't ideal for driving on highways. If I begin to give it enough gas to actually maintain a near to constant speed, it will run without much power to it for a bit and then manage to get out of the lower rpm's and then shoot forward some (similar to 1-4th gears).

I had previously posted about issues with this engine. At the time I had been running it with what appeared to be a '88 CRX intake manifold. When I had been running that, I had really bad issues with idle and was running rich. Since then, I have swapped over to a stock z6 intake manifold and that appears to have fixed those issues. I still have the lack of low end but it's not nearly what it was. It is still an issue that's big enough that it still matters.

What I have done so far:
-compression test -- checked out just fine (200, 205, 200, 200)
-cleaned injectors
-verified correct idle speed
-verified correct ignition timing -- seemed to help a little bit.. not much though
-verified correct cam timing
-verified fuel pressure
-replaced fuel filter with swap
-check spark plugs -- all checked out fine

I have read that the d-series engines tend to lack low end power. I had a d16y7 in the car before the swap and I don't remember ever having an issue like this with that engine.

I'm running out of things to look for. Let me know if there's something i'm missing.
Thanks!

 

Hesitation can be a bad distributor. Aftermarket distributors are known to have issues.

You can find an OEM TD42U from the salvage yards for about 100 bucks and 7 out of 10 times it fixes the issue.

This is assuming you went with the OBD1 ECU and harness etc.

 

When I did the swap, I took the guts of the OBD2 (d16y7) distributor and put them in the z6 distributor so I wouldn't need an adapter as I am using an OBD2 harness that was stock with the car.
I made sure that nothing was damaged that could cause any issues when the swap was done. The distributor was working perfectly without issues before the engine swap too. I don't think the distributor is the issue but I can't think of what else could be either.

My harness setup is a d16y7 harness. The harness uses an OBD2 to OBD1 adapter to the P28 ECU. All of the wiring for VTEC and the IACV on the engine has been wired correctly to my knowledge and everything repinned properly on the ECU.

I am also running a different exhaust and I was wondering if how open this exhaust is would affect the compression. I am using the . I am also using a instead of a cat.

 

all signs point to distributor.

 

Okay. I will have to give that a try then.