Engine swap woes

[heucuva]

My friend's '92 Civic is the sole target of Murphy's Law, I swear.


It was in pristine condition (a D15B, I think) until about a year ago, when he broke the water pump in it. He took it to a mechanic who said "$800 to replace the water pump." Amazingly (not), it was the same price to replace the entire engine (because the water pump is situated in an annoyingly tight area that practically requires removal of the entire engine compartment's contents to get to.)

So, my friend decided to, instead, get an entirely new engine. He found a place in National City, CA that sells working engines that are pulled out of cars in Japan. So he got a higher-end 1992 D16A engine and put a junky AES C.A.R.B. E.O. air intake and filter, becuase "it looked cool". When I saw that, I shook my head in shame, knowing that it was going to eventually fail spectacularly someday. The air intake practically drops down to the ground and sucks air from before the wheel, like that will make a difference....

Well, "someday" came sooner than expected. A few months ago, it rained pretty heavily here in San Diego -- my friend got off work and drove into the Point Loma area of town to get some food. He drove into a tall pool of water and the engine immediately stalled. The rain subsided a bit and he pushed it into a parking lot to figure it out. I drove down there and met him and tried to figure it out as well. He had killed the battery AND the starter, trying to get it running again, so I really couldn't help him too much.

We got it home by towing it and I got under the hood to start diagnosing things. First thing that I did was unbolt the starter and get it to the local auto parts store, who told me "yup, it's totally dead. It's not extending the gear, there's a short in the coil, it's kaput." $120 for a brand new starter and a new battery later, all it does now is slip the starter gear into place, but it dead-shorts out after that. That's not supposed to happen, I thought. Well, I took the NEW starter to the same place and the diagnostics came up 150 percent OK. So I got it home and put it in and the same thing... so I got my multimeter out and started prodding around in the starter area. Everything looked ok, but there was a HUGE drain from the battery whenever the key was set to ignition. It was then that it dawned on me that the air intake might have sucked water into the engine.... Water doesn't compress much.

So I pulled the spark plugs out, starting from 4 to 1. When I got to the #2 cylinder, water literally shot out over my shoulder and splattered acrossed the ceiling of the garage, about an 8-foot distance. I pulled out the #1 spark plug and saw a little pooling of water in the cylinder, with the aid of a very bright flashlight. Lucky me, I had a perfect tool to get that out of there. I had just had dental surgery earlier and was given a little "baster" type thingy to put hydrogen peroxide on one of my teeth, which I no longer needed. I got it out, stuck a small hose doohickey from the end of a battery acid tester on it and started sucking out water from all the cylinders. I got about a quart of water out of the engine, which surprised me.

We started the car up without much problem. Although, there was a new mild clicking noise, which sort of sounded like a valve was sticking or a ring was busted. I didn't see white smoke coming out the tail pipe, so I was even more worried, since I didn't know what was causing the noise.

I told him to baby the engine, not to race it much past getting up to speed on the highway, and he did pretty well until two weeks after, when he called me up and said "I think I threw a rod". "How'd you do that?!" "well, I got to work and I get it into the parking lot and all I hear is a loud 'BANG!', then the car stalled out and now there's a pool of oil on the ground." "Well, you probably cracked the block or something... did you race the car?" "no..." (I know he was lying, he has a lead foot so big that would make Shaq jealous)

So I get down to his workplace and take a look under the hood. With my little keychain flashlight I see a giant hole in the block, just under the exhaust manifold. I tell him "yep, you need a new engine"

He goes and gets a new engine, a 1993 ZC. I can't find any documentation on the engine, except that it's probably meant for a Prelude or something. We pry off the transmission that was on it, pop the borked engine and transmission out of the car, slap the old transmission onto the new engine and get it in. Everything hooks up pretty much identically, except on the fuel/air intake manifold, there's no spot to hook up the EGR, so we left it unattached. It idles funny, like it's expecting something that just isn't there... probably the EGR that isn't hooked up. That's not our worry, right now.

The car now hauls major butt like you wouldn't believe. So the engine upgrade is a complete success.... except our main worry is that when you start the car up and try to shift it out of park into drive/reverse/plaid/whatever, it stays locked in park. The brakes are good and work just fine, there's no brake indicator lighting up that the Chilton's says would indicate something wrong there, but it still doesn't unlock the transmission shift control.

We can unlock it manually by inserting the key into the spot that says "Shift Control Unlock", put it into Neutral and then start the car and drive just fine, but the moment the shift control goes into park, it's locked there until you manually unlock it again.

I looked at all the cables and sensors in the engine compartment, but this is bugging the heck out of me. What's causing the shift control to not unlock normally when the brakes are applied?

[snowman2005]

idk anythign about auto trans but sounds liek ur friends having a bad time with his car and shit. i personaly wouldnt of tried to start the engine after its been flooded but too late now. i have no idea and never heard this shift control lock thing that u need to turn with a key mayb if u could get a couple pics be easier to tell?

[heucuva]

Well, this isn't an exact picture, but it gives an idea. there's a keyhole in the left-hand side of the shifter (which is a bit more linear on the '92 civic, instead of this screwy swervy one). That allows you to pull it out of Park and put it into another selection, like Neutral or Drive, for whatever reason.

http://honda.net.my/models/newstream/per4.htm