97 Ek swapped turbo civic...Won't turn over

[Classicrocjunkie]

We had a customer come to us with a freshly built H22 motor out of a 98 prelude, and wanted a turbo setup built on it. It was never ran after it was built, because apparently he washed the rings out the first time around. So we built everything on our end, brought to by dyno tuned, and the damn thing wouldn't fire up.

Its a 97 Honda Civic DX Hatch.
H22 Prelude motor out of a 98
And OBD I wiring harness... *wtf
HondataS300 software.

Things we've noticed wrong ...

Its spitting coolant right out of the front from the HG ( Copper HG)
We swapped out high impedance injectors for Low impedance. ( or one way or the other, apparently the right ones for an OBD1 are in it)
Still don't feel injectors clicking open while trying to start the car
It back fires / pops while trying to start.
Plugs are turning black

Things we've done...
Compression test - fine across the board.
Checked spark - Yes
Fuel at the rail - Yes
Checking timing - Seems right ( but we're all GM guys) Arrows point at like 2 and timing marks are right next to one another but they are stock cam gears and are very worn.
No coolant in Oil

Things told to the owner by engine builders...
It was timed right, if it wasn't... it wouldn't be able to make compression.
He shouldn't be using anti-freeze with a copper head gasket

....WTF?

Something is obviously wrong, and we have no idea where to go from here other than getting rid of the Hondata, and telling the kid to get the damn right engine wiring harness, and us tearing the whole motor down for him.

Does anyone have a link to a wiring diagram for the resistor box which control the high impedance injector box? I think that what It was called... lol.




Hopefully you honda boys on here could lend a hand of where to start digging next, it would be much appreciated.

[CivicSpoon]

Are you absolutely sure it's an OBD1 engine harness? The reason I ask is because the OBD1 Civic and all Acura Integras (basically identical harness to the Civic) are 2 piece harnesses. There's a harness for the engine itself, which connects to another harness at the passenger side shock tower area and connects to the ECU at the other end. The OBD2 Civics have a 1 piece harness that plugs into the engine sensors and goes all the way to the ECU, with no connections in between. If it was done right, it shouldn't be an issue really, it just seems strange to me.

Is that picture fairly updated to how the car is? I noticed that there is a ground wire missing on the valve cover on the drivers side. But where it's normally hooked up to, the bolt by the headlight, there is a wire connected. There should also be one from the frame to the transmission, and one connected to the thermostat housing. I've run into no-start problems with Civics and Accords that were caused by lack of enough grounds. If you have extra wire around, you might want to try touching 1 end to the battery terminal and 1 end on the engine or transmission. Might be worth a try.

Here's where the timing marks should be:


Here's some info on the resistor box:
http://hondata.com/techinjectorwiring.html
On another forum, people are claiming those pins of the plug are incorrect so make sure to check the power to all the pins before splicing into them.

The copper head gasket thing makes no sense to me either. I'd check the torque on those head bolts or studs. Here's the torque specs for the stock head bolts, if he's not using ARP head studs instead:


That's about all I can think of right now. But I have to disagree about the getting rid of Hondata thing. Hondata is very common engine management, and is supposed to be very user friendly (compared to some others).

[Classicrocjunkie]

You'll have to excuse me on the a lot of this, as I am a GM guy. Never worked with diagnostics on hondas till this nightmare. Just building turbo setups for them.

Our customer told us, it was an OBD 1 harness as the Hondata he is running from what I was told was for an OBD 1 honda. He said prior to running the Hondata he was running "chrome"?

This guy here is the hondata he is running... http://hondata.com/s300.html

I know it is a good software, but I was under the impression this version was for OBD1 cars only. We have the same unit in our 95 turbo'd civic.

As far as the pictures, those are the most recent yes. I have a couple more here, not sure if they will help. However, I know of 1 ground wiring running from the intake manifold to the chasis that I remember seeing today. Like they were trying to do a hypergrounding setup.





I don't have anything better than those... Thanks for the links to the info and timing diagrams! I'll also have to double check on the harness too... Since we seem to be getting wrong answers on everything from the owner and motor builders.... Either the kid or the motor builders have no idea what they are talking about.

Thanks again!

[CivicSpoon]

Most Hondata units are for OBD1, but they do sell some with OBD2 plug. I doubt that's what's in his car though. But he may have just bought an ecu plug conversion harness. It plugs into the OBD2A ecu plugs of the stock car, and has the OBD1 plugs on the other end to work with an OBD1 ecu. I hope that the customer would have gone that route instead of switching out the entire harness, but some people like to do things the hard way haha And Crome is another ems people run off of chipped ecus http://www.tunewithcrome.com/ Just a cheaper alternative to Hondata. And I understand completely what you're going through. I've worked on quite a few cars where the owner gave incorrect info, and really didn't end up knowing what was going on with their own car. It's crazy some times.