D16A1 engine swap, part 7

Overview
Hearing my engine run last weeked was a great relief! I spent many hours under the hood and inside the car with the soldering iron and to see that it all came together was a great feeling. After letting the car run for a total of about 60 seconds, I drained the oil and changed the oil filter. That's probably a bit overkill, but oil is cheap. Now it was time to run the engine for about 20 mins to get it up to temp. The faulty oil pressure gauge turned out not to be faulty. The gauge was not properly grounded. Once I fixed that, it began working perfectly.

I modified the front engine mount in order to gain some clearance between the timing cover and the hood. By adding 4 washers, I effectively lowered the front of the engine by about 1/2".



A properly functioning O2 sensor is a must, so I went ahead and bought a new one from oxygensensors.com. There was no telling how old the sensor was in this engine, so I opted to spend the $25 for piece of mind.



Here's a healthy 20" of vacuum at idle.



The flash made it look like the gears were not moving, but they actually were. I used this opportunity to set the base ignition timing to the proper spec.



Here is my finished gauge panel. It came out really nice. From left to right: Autometer electric oil pressure gauge, Spearco vacuum/boost gauge, Autometer full-sweep fuel pressure gauge, J&S Safeguard a/f and knock monitor. I had a healthy amount of oil pressure. The vacuum/boost gauge's line got pinched while going through the firewall, so it wasn't working.



My voltmeter showed a healthy 14.3 volts from the battery at idle. It looks like the charging system is working properly. Woohoo!



I opted to use the 92 Civic CX's radiator for now. I have a Del Sol twin-core radiator that is twice as thick as this one, but it requires larger hoses. I will probably install the upgraded radiator when I install the turbocharger.



The only things left are the and body panels.




Back to main