I have a 1999 Accord V6 I use to run back and forth to work. Last Friday on my way home it decided to spin a bearing on the interstate. I called up a few local salvage yards and have come across two available motors. One is from a 1999 with 240,000 miles, the other is from a 2000 with only 130,000 miles, has been verified as running good and has been compression tested. Both motors are the same price out the door. Here's my issue. The 1999 has the dizzy just like my current model, making it a direct swap and could be done in a day. The 2000 on the other hand is when Honda switched to the coil on plug setup for the J30 engine. Both engines come with complete, 100%, uncut wiring harness with the plugs all they way back to the ECU. When I look online at ECU's for the V6, they seem to be grouped as 98-00 and 01-02. I do know they added traction control in 01 and read somewhere that causes issues with non equipped models, so didn't know if that was why they split them up that way. I know it's a long shot, but wanted to see if anyone could tell me whether they knew if I could use my 1999 ECU with a coil on plug engine? I ask because if I did have a 2000 Accord with coil on plug and needed an ECU, most everything I find online is grouped as 98-00 and would assume those would work? So why wouldn't it work in my case? Are all 37820-P8C-A51 ECUs the same and all output the 6 individual coil signals even on a dizzy model? Which is why if I get the 2000 engine with 100k less miles with the complete, uncut harness, it would be nice if I could just plug that into my ECU and be good. That way I don't have to worry about dealing with the immobilizer. After looking through the service manual, looks like I would just have to move the black/yellow ignition wire from the coil on the dizzy to the feed for the individual coil packs, the rest of the harness all looks the same. I have spent many hours trying to find an answer to this question, and most everything that comes up is the 6 speed tranny swap, which doesn't really help my current issue. I'm no stranger to engine swaps, I've been known to do a few in my day. But would be nice to get a motor with 100k less miles and a coil on plug setup for the same price. Thanks!!

 

all you're going to be doing is just grabbing the engine and swap it in for your existing, no need to do anything else, make it simple

the engines are exactly the same, the only difference is the coil over plug setup which is outside of the engine

 

That's what I was hoping to do. I guess my main concern was and the reason I'm asking is because the 1999 just uses one ECU output for the main coil to fire all 6 cylinders through the distributor, whereas the coil on plug setup uses 6 individual outputs from the ECU to fire each coil separately. I mainly just wanted to make sure my 1999 ECU already had the dedicated pins that would actually fire for the 6 coil packs. It's been having a heck of a time trying to find an ECU pin-out for the V6 ECU. I can find it for the 4 cylinder all day long, but not so much luck for the 6. From the info I've found just by part searching, it seems like it should work, but was just looking for someone who could confirm for sure before I dropped it in there and found out otherwise.

 

No, keep it simple. The 98-99's have a distributor as your existing has so keep it just like that. You will use that. However, the 99-00 use different intake manifolds and exhaust manifolds so you will need to swap over yours from your old to the new engine.

The only thing you will be using is the bare block of the new engine.

Also, it would be wise to clean out the egr ports while you got everything off. There is a how-to on youtube for this engine.