Del Sol SiR engine into MA9 engine swap (B16A).

[Drew555]

Hi folks, not been a member for long (only just got myself a Honda), and am throroughly stunned by the amount of technical knowledge that seems to be here.

I have had a look through the forum for the information I require - but the sheer amount of technical articles added to the fact that I have no real idea about Honda engine/chassis codes etc. (it took me a fortnight to figure out I have an MA9...) I just ended up confused by the techincal terms that seem to be in use all over the place.

So... I'm here to ask either for specific advice or links to the appropriate guides/threads that describe the swap I would like to carry out (I tried searching, but to be honest, the thread titles that come up really mean nothing to me - I don't speak JDM yet ).

Here goes...

Like I said, I have a five door 1996 Civic 1.5 VTEC-E (MA9 chassis code, I believe) which has the noisiest of noisy gearboxes. In fact, I'm waiting for it to drop out of the bottom of the car.

I've been offered the opportunity to buy the bits I need to put the engine/gearbox etc. from a CRX Del Sol SiR (I think that's right - I've been told it's a B16A) into my car at a price I just can't ignore.

From a cursory glance it appears that the swap should be (mechanically at least) relatively straightforward (bear in mind my track car is a BMW E30 with a Nissan Silvia 1.8 turbo engine and gearbox in it, so we're not exactly new to engine swaps) - what concerns me is the potential for electrical maladies to strike.

I can have just about whatever bits I want from the Del Sol to do the conversion - but am I going to run into any particular problems? And are there any engine swap specific parts I'm going to need to get it all done in one hit (the car is my daily drive, so I don't really want to be getting mostway through the swap and finding I need a small blanking plate or loom adaptor that I can't get for a few days...)?

Am I as well to take the entire front subframe off of the Del Sol and swap it into the MA9 or is there a better/more efficient/whatever way of doing things?

Any help/links/advice/first hand experiences you could be kind enough to help me out with would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

Drew

[WilkesyMB6]

There is a guy on here that has done it or in the process of. Sorry I can't remember his name but the car is white if that helps.

[Errordeck]

You need to find out if your car is obd1 or obd2. Checkout you ecu, see your ecu plugs. Roughly said, having 2 rows of pins is obd1, having 3 rows above each other is obd2.

But MA/MB models are some sort of mixture in Honda land between the EG and EK model. For instance I have an MB which has obd2 like plugs and stuff, except for ecu and pinout of the wiring loom, that's OBD1.

I believe (although not 100% certain) that you don't have to change the subframe, but only the rear motor mount.

I don't know the size of your brakes now, but I suspect they are 242mm in size. Can you take the knuckles also? As a SiR has 262mm brakes, which can be easily swapped for 282 or even bigger to add some stopping power..

[Drew555]

Thanks for the help folks, if you come across the username of the guy with the white car, drop a link in here for me plz?

I'll go and see if I can suss out if it's OBD1 or 2 - first step, locating the ECU...

I can have most of the front off of the Sol - and my resident Hondaphile tells me the Sol brakes are bigger - so I'll be pillaging the brakes - probably along with the shafts, ECU, engine mounts, blah, blah and possibly the suspension legs too (I assume with it being an SiR the suspension will be uprated to some degree?).

If it turns out I have the wrong OBDs, will this make the job a) much more difficult, impossible or c) make very little difference to the job?

[Errordeck]

that would be a) more difficult

[Drew555]

I notice 'more difficult', not impossible - but before I go asking what else would need doing, I'll go check the car...

[jonnyricer]

Yes should bolt straight in use the del sol engine mounts and drive shafts might be easier to swap engine loom from del sol to the ma should be plug and play !! I'm going the other way b18(mb6 vti engine) into my eg5 esi bolts in plug and play ecu(p72) good times. Have a word with rich aka civicturbo

[Drew555]

Right.

Finally got around to locating the ECU and having a prod around it.

It has 3 plugs, one of which is blue, and the pins are arranged in two rows. I assume this makes it OBD1 - and I'm told that the Sol engine is OBD1 as well, so we're good to go.

Does this mean I don't have to change the engine loom and it will work on the wiring that's already there? Because that would be nice.... or are the plugs on the B16 all different to whatever the engine is that's in there now?

The plan at the moment is to just rip the entire front subframe off of both the cars and basically swap the Sol stuff straight into the MA in one go - engine, box, subframe, suspension, brakes blah blah the whole lot. Is this likely to be easier than swapping the bits over peicemeal? Because I want the brakes (bigger apparently) and the suspension is allegedly uprated compared to the MA stuff and doing it all in one piece seems logically to be the easier route than doing it all in separate stages...

Sorry about the millions of questions, but we're planning on doing this conversion in the next few days and we'd kinda like to have the answers before we start

1"£££$££"!

[Drew555]

Hello again

Got the Sol back to the workshop ready for the swap.

Had a quick look and freed off the brakes, and had a proper look at the ECUs on both cars - they look identical but the MA has blue ports and the Sol has grey ones...

Other than worrying about this mismatch of colours maybe meaning something bad, I think we're good to go.

As an aside - we ripped the Sol down the road and the difference between VTEC and VTEC-E is astounding

[Drew555]

Right - hellllllllllllllp?

The swap is 'done' - but all is not well.

It's running like a bag of crap and it looks to have pushed the o/s driveshaft out of the diff, losing drive (it's currently abandoned in a car park - we started at 7:30 am and when we left the workshop it was 10:30 pm, dark, on a country lane and we'd had a gutful of it), so we'll get it towed back and have a look at it later today or tomorrow.

So I'm a bit desperate for some help...

Some background on the swap.

We've used the shafts, hubs and brakes off the Sol - everything seemed to bolt up without to many problems - well, nothing that caused any concern anyway. It's been said that it might not have been seated properly - but it DID drive OK for about half a mile, and we have no idea how it even managed to move over far enough to pop out of the diff. Any ideas about something obvious we might have missed?

The steering had just come from right-hand-down lock when it lost drive - related perhaps?

Surely the hub being held in position by the balljoints shouldn't allow the shaft to move far enough towards the outside of the car to allow it to come un-splined?

Hoping it will be an easy, simple fix - help?

On to the running problem. Remarkably, it fired up on the first turn of the key - although we did do a couple of pretty desperate things (it was late at night and we were knackered, so don't think too badly of us).

The symptoms are: it idles lovely, no hunting or messing around. At low revs with very light throttle openings it is absolutely fine. At any kind of larger throttle opening it just bogs down - keeps running, just lacks ANY kind of power. The orange 'check engine' light is on.

It all bolted up and seemed fine, the engine bay plugs seemed to all be fine (there is an unused multi-plug on the car side of the loom on the n/s that we assumed just wasn't needed). The fuel filter arrangement on the B16 is slightly different - the fuel filter has a 3 pin multi-plug that had no corresponding wire on the car - so we used the fuel filter from the Civic instead (without the 3 pin connector).

Here's where we got desperate. When we went to plug in the ECU, although we had compared the two and they seemed the same (apart from one of the plugs being blue instead of grey), the end, larger plug just wouldn't fit. It all looked the same (although the wires coming out of each of the large plugs was entirely different) it just seemed to be quarter of a mm too big. So we bit the bullet, risked a fire and removed a couple of plastic prongs from the car plug and made it fit. Shockingly, it ran immediately

We didn't have time to swap over the fuel pump from the B16 donor - could this be the cause of the issue? Or is it more likely to be something to do with the fuel filter 3-pin connector? Or have we f**ked up an ECU?

Any ideas you could shove in our direction would be gratefully recieved, we're about ready to burn the damn thing.

Thanks.