Help im lost

Yeah you're supposed to use a timing light and stuff like that. It clamps on to a spark plug wire and fires a strobe light in time with the spark so you can point it at the markings near your crank pulley so you can see where the timing is set.

I don't want to say you can just rough it in by hand and feel because I don't want you do do something dangerous that might advance the timing too much and engender detonation, but you wouldn't be the first person in the world to just pull it back and keep inching it up until it feels about right and doesn't ping when you're hammering on it.

>hard shakes up until vtec (5200 rpm)
Just always drive it above 5200 RPM, bro

Right now, the dizzy is all the way leaning to the back of the car (thats how the one i took off was too) thats advanced right?

Turn it while the engine is idling and find out. It should surge a bit as you go from retarded to advanced, and it should bog a bit as you go from advanced to retarded.

Advanced sounds more like
>tick ta tick tick tick tock tick tik
Retarded sounds more like
>mop buh buh dum dum dum bop

The other thing to do is to tug the throttle from idle.

Does it go bubububububarooooom?
Or does it go bbbBRREEERRRR?

Guess which one it's going to do when you try to drive it.

Moved the dizzy around. Very slowly. As i turned it toward the cars front, slight decrease in idle speed, but just as bumpy idle as ever.

Is it bumpy like uneven or is it hunting around to maintain idle speed?

Uneven bumpy.

Does it change at all when you tug the throttle by hand, or is does it remain bumpy no matter the RPM?

The higher it goes, the less it's bumpy when out of gear. In gear, its bumpy till about 5200

Alright, so that seems to me like you have I'll guess one cylinder that isn't firing right. That it evens out after VTAK is possibly telling, but I'll have to lean toward something being mechanically off.

You could try moving the injectors around to see if that changes the rhythm, but I think you might be better off getting a compression test to check if maybe you have a situation where the valves aren't closing all the way, perhaps related to the VTEC system.

I had tried unplugging the vtec solenoid. I did that cause there was some oil grime in and around the connectors. Didnt change anything

Did it even out above 5200 with the VTAK disabled?

It's naturally going to get more smooth with higher RPMs without load. When you say it's more lumpy in gear, that's expected if you have let's say one cylinder that can't keep up with the rest. That's the kind of thing where you notice it most with load on the engine.

I havent taken it much above 4k ever since the problem started. Since the motors not running right i didnt want to stress it. Should i bother with injector cleaner? The injectors are getting power. I tested that already.

Injector cleaner isn't going to hurt anything, but you'll have to run an entire tank through it to find out. I mean, if it were my car, I would consider doing the seafoam and steam clean treatment as well just in case it's valve gunk, but really that shouldn't happen on a 20k old motor.

My gut tells me there's something else wrong, whether it's mechanical or some odd vacuum line you can't hear. Compression test shouldn't cost much, and that would rule out a raft of horrible mechanical problems.

Sounds like you have a bad vacuum leak bud.

Best to get 2 or 3 cans of carb/brake cleaner and start spraying the rubber hoses. Listen for a change in idle sound, and that will be your problem.

Good advice, but noteworthy: unless it's a big leak, it will make less of a difference the more the throttle is open.

We don't have vids or sound here, but if it goes to 5k before it evens out then probably it's not just some tiny amount of air from a vacuum line unless it's been disconnected from something important to the determination of the correct A/F ratio.

Checked hoses and intake and throttle body gaskets for vacuum leaks in the past few weeks with carb cleaner.visually checked hoses for cracks. Im running out of money is the thing. Gotta fix it.

Why did you swap an engine anyway if you don't have backup cash to deal with it?

Is this OBDII? Did you try pulling codes? Does it have a wide-band O2 sensor pre-cat that we can take a voltmeter to? Did you check the spark plug gap and move them around out of desperation?

I bought it from my brother in law. I wasnt gonna go to college far away from home, but then i got high ACT scores and a fullride. I still need to pay for food and gas and stuff. I have some money but not enough to blow on parts that wont fix it. The car was obd2, but is converted to obd1. Only 1 02 sensor. Unplugging it does nothing.

Unplugging the one O2 sensor shouldn't really do anything, since that's the old lambda sensor stuff where it just sends a signal to whatever passes for an ECU to try to rock the A/F back and forth to keep the cat going during cruise.

You could take a reading off of it at idle with the engine hot, but I'm not sure how far I'd trust that as anything more than a maybe clue. Do you know if there's a way you can get the ECU to blink codes on your dash somewhere? I'm afraid I don't know enough about your particular engine to speculate about what might be going wrong if it's really riding on the edge of a bad A/F ratio, which would be an obvious guess about why it's running rough and can't make power.

As far as Veeky Forums goes, I would suggest posting some video about how it runs from the engine bay at idle with you giving it some revving by hand. That might lead somebody to notice something that's not obvious from these textual exchanges.

Sounds like you are running on three pots. You can check this by disconnecting spark plug wires:

>disconnect one spark plug
>engine dies or runs rougher than before
This on is ok.
>engine runs as before
That's your inactive cylinder.

Well, every cylinder needs 4 things to run:
>air
>fuel
You said you already tested the injectors (all four?) and your vacuum lines.
>spark
You need to check the timing (or get it checked, shouldnt be expensive at a small shop) and whether you actually have spark on all plugs. You can check whether you have spark by looking at the plug outside the engine when it's running. Depending on whether your car has two or four ingnition coils, you might need to make contact between the electrode and the engine block to see it.
>compression
Only a compression test can shed light on this. I hope for you it's not that. It's also somewhat unlikely if the engine hasn't ran a lot.

ACKTCHUALLY
Yanking the injector plugs is better. That way you don't have fuel washing the cylinder.

Can confirm this is effective in determining which cylinder sucks. Did this in the course of figuring out which plug wire was rotted to shit. Also had a fun time finding out what it was like to run on each pair of two cylinders, and trying to see if it would run on one cylinder :D

I tried the plugs. I had them outside the cylinder, and grounded them to the battery with a jumper cable. Compression is the only thing i havent checked. God i hope thats not it.

How did the the plugs look? Did one of them look like hell? Did they look all about the same?

I really think you should get a compression check. You can diy that close enough if you want to go that route, but getting a shop to do it might net you a guy who can give you good advice by having a look at it himself.

Aprt from the things already mentioned, it could also be the mass airflow sensor. That should throw a code, but I don't know anything about OP's custom swapped Honda OBD1.

Yes, absolutely. MAF would be the #1 suspect if it's an A/F problem, and it might not even throw a code if it's just running rough.

Plugs all looked the same. Not terrible but old. The car has no maf sensor. Hondas of that age have a map sensor. Tried unplugging it but all doez is make the car that

Yeah pulling the air sensor, mass or pressure, will usually make it die. Plugs will reveal the most when you get out and slam on it, but it's a decent sign if none of them is obviously #rekt. Based on what you've said so far, I'm not convinced about the A/F hypothesis.

Maybe it's something simple, but get a compression test, my son. Where did this JDM swap come from anyway and why did your bro sell it to you?

The motor and ecu were ordered through honda motors online (reputable) him and my sister moved to tenn for a job. The city hes living in has emmision regs. Wouldnt pass emmisions.

Nothing wrong with taking him to task about it. Maybe he knows something or could lend a hand in some way if you can't narrow down what the problem is on your own.

I mean it's not his problem but I sure wouldn't saddle some kid in my family with a bunch of bullshit and then look the other way.

Thanks anons. This is the only positive experience ive ever had on Veeky Forums. Guess i need to stay off pol and fit

kek nah brah /pol/ and Veeky Forums are part of the backbone, just like Veeky Forums. They're not going to break us any time soon even if things ebb and flow.

>tick ta tock tick mop buh dum bop bruh
kek

BIX NOOD

These use speed density. TPS ECT and MAP are all they use for inferring airflow and such.

Check your TPS signal, make sure it goes from 0.5v to 4.5v(ish) smoothly without any drop outs. TPS shouldnt cause a bad idle though.

Look into ECT or MAP sensors. either of those can cause wonky idle and driveability issues.

pic semi-related

this

check your rotor screw, if you have one (you said you put a new dizzy on? some came with push on rotors) ive had many of those screws fall out causing erratic spark.

bad map sensor(rare) or possibly frayed wiring/busted o-ring on map sensor.

ect could possibly cause this, to check if the ect sensor is bad, disconnect the black 2 prong plug on the left side of the cylinder head, right under the distributor and take it for a drive. it should run, but probably will be sluggish.

might also want to check your fuel filter. easy way to check if your getting enough fuel flow is to remove the return line and put it into a bottle, see how much fuel you have returning back to tank when you turn the key on engine off.

you can basically unplug every sensor on that engine except for map and IACV and it should run.

is it chipped? check engine light on?

what ecu are you running? check the adapter harness for loose connections.

im assuming your running a p30 ecu and downgraded to obd1. if not and your running the actual obd2 P2T ecu.

in either case if your getting a code for the knock sensor you have one of two problems, timing is so far advanced that the engine is knocking and the ecu is retarding timing. or the knock sensor went bad/wiring shorted causing the ecu to not see the knock sensor. if the ecu does not "see" the knock sensor it will retard timing by 6 degrees across the board until its repaired.

You got memed

compression test all cylinders until you find one that is reading fuck all
dont think its bad spark cuz then unburnt fuel would be coming through the exhaust and you'd smell it big time
either way it sounds like big money to fix

Have you checked the motor mounts? My civic rumbled like a V8 when idlebecause of a faulty hidraulic motor mount.

youd hear it
plus a 94 civic would just have regular rubber or whatever mounts, no hydraulic shit

Nigga what city does your bro live in?

Yeh p30 ecu. Took it to a small shop today. Theyre gonna check compression, fuel pressure (dont think thTs it) injectors and vacuum. Hopefuly its anything but compression at this point