H22 / '99 Civic - Mystery of the missing RPM Output Wire

[Dr Tweak]

Hi everyone,

I've spent several hours searching this and other forums on this matter and I can't seem to find the answer. I'm doing an H22 swap into a '99 Civic DX. I'm using the P13 ECU, modifying the Civic harness, and the engine is from a '93. I've been wiring it up and that's been going fine, until I got to the distributor. The 8-pin distributor plug on the Civic harness has all 8 pins filled, but in the diagrams it shows that there is a 9th wire, a blue one, that goes to the tach. It doesn't seem to be here. On the H22 distributor, 7 of the 8 pins are filled, the missing one being the Black/Yellow power wire, which is on a seperate 2-pin connector along with a Blue wire (which I guess is the tach wire). Where is this blue tach wire on the Civic harness, and where does it need to go?

 

[Dr Tweak]

Anyone?

 

[formby]

it has to be there....

 

[Dr Tweak]

Well... it isn't... heheh

 

[hb91]

coil negative is the tachometer wire, i don't know what's going on with your distributor but that wire is supposed to the gauge cluster harness. i would need more details about your wiring to know exactly what you're trying to do. and is the wire cut or just missing all together. is this a new distributor, or did it come with the engine that you are putting in?

if you haven't already i would open up the distributor and see what is going on.

 

[Dr Tweak]

Okay, let's see if this helps out. Here is the distributor on the H22 engine. You can see that I used the plug from the Civic, and I swapped the power wire (black/yellow) over to the Civic plug (which had 8 pins filled, all of the pins matched except for the power wire on the H22 distributor which was on a large two-pin connector). You can see the blue "engine speed output" wire isn't attached to anything, and there doesn't seem to be one on the Civic harness.

Here are the plugs from the H22, you can see that only 7 pins on the 8-pin connector are used (the 8th one being the black/yellow power wire which is on the large two-pin connector), and then the blue wire on the large two-pin connector which is the "engine speed output" wire.

And here is the Civic distributor, the only difference being that I have stolen the pin for the coil power wire from the 8-pin connector:

Again, I have the blue "engine speed output" wire on the H22 distributor, I just need to figure out where to attach it on the Civic harness.

Thanks for the help!

-Doc

 

[Dr Tweak]

I think I figured it out. This car didn't come with a tach stock, so they don't have the wire in the harness. Am I right?

 

[hb91]

sorry i haven't replied i haven't checked my mail in awhile.
if it didn't that would be strange.
it would cost honda a lot more to make two different harness' than it would to just reuse the same one and put in a different cluster.

are you putting a tach cluster in it or an external tach? i'm still a little confused as to what goal you're trying to achieve.

 

[Dr Tweak]

Yeah that's exactly what I was thinking, but I never located a tach wire on the stock Civic harness, and there is no stock tach. The customer already installed an aftermarket tach, which I hooked up to the blue wire and it works perfectly. The swap is complete.

-Doc

 

[hb91]

if that is the case then i would leave it be.

 

[Dr Tweak]

Oh no doubt, it's no longer at my shop. I was just following up on the thread. Thanks very much for trying to help out.

-Doc

 

[erdalh22]

hi,
I have swapped 93 h22 on 99 civic. and I have the same problem.. is anybody using stock tach? my tach is working wrong is anybody solve this problem

 

[Dr Tweak]

Actually I figured out the problem was that the Civic I was working on didn't have a stock tach, so the wire didn't exist. In your case, you do have a stock tach so it's a different situation. I don't know what's going on with yours, but I do carry tach adapters that you can use to calibrate the signal, they are $75 plus shipping. My email is drtweak@phoenixtuning.com

-Doc

 

[BrutalB83]

Wow...I'm seriously impressed that you showed up to answer a question about your two-year-old thread...

 

[Dr Tweak]

Thanks, I try to subscribe to most of my threads so that I can keep track of them, I got this notification in my email so I'd thought I'd drop by and help if I could. This is one of the better Honda forums out there so I try to swing through every now and then

-Doc

 

[LS_VTEC]

Dr Tweak... your another one on here sippin' the kool-aid eh? You do not need a Tach Adapter for christs sake. How do you think you can plug in other clusters with tachs and have the tachometer work just fine?

An easy way to find the wire from the coil is to take a small tachometer and pinch it into the wires on the harness until you find the correct wire.

 

[Dr Tweak]

Honestly I have no idea, he said his tach was reading but not correctly, and I use this tach adapter to fix that problem on swaps like when we put 2JZGTEs into 240SX cars, so that's all I had to suggest

-Doc

 

[erdalh22]

....

thanks dr. tweak
I agree with you this is a voltage problem between engine and stock tach of the car.. the calibration will solve the problem. I will turn back you from e-mail..
thank you very much