Articles » Swap: B16a into a 2nd gen CRX

28. Carefully remove the engine harness from the motor, you also need to remove the plugs for your injectors off the stock motor.

29. Now you need to plug from the harness to all your sensors, its pretty much plug and play and its not that easy to confuse.

30. Now this is where your swap becomes tricky! you need to add 5 wires to your engine, What I did was buy 5 different colored 18 gauge wire from AutoZone, about 10 bucks total, took about 15 feet of four wires, took about 2 foot in length, and then taped the rest of the four wires together. then I made my five connections, 1 for the vtec solenoid, 1 for the knock sensor, 1 for the secondary o2 sensor, 1 for the vtec pressure switch. And the fifth wire is for a ground for the vtec pressure switch, I ran the 5th wire separately. so make these connections, and then wrap the wire up so it will be out of the way,

31. This is also a good time to replace parts, I opted to replace my valve cover gasket, and spark plug grommets, alternator belt, distributor cap, spark plugs, plug wires, and the rotor, (now im not the only who had a problem so im going to give some advice, if you replace the rotor, I would buy some thread lock and put some around the screw and make sure you tighten it very well or else you will have to buy a new distributor like I did, they aren't cheap and they are hard to come by).

32. This is the most important step right here, Remove your radiator, remove the ac fan, and remove the cooling fan, its not that hard to do, and then when you are done, remove the cross member. It is held on by 6 bolts, now this is the fun part. If you are using a hasport or place racing mount kit it does not utilize the front mount, now in order for your motor to fit you need to remove the bracket that the front mount bolts too. This is a huge pain in the as*. I drilled a few of the welds and after destroying my bit, I used a crow bar and the ball joint separator and basically pryed them back and forth until they broke off. Your going to reinstall this stuff once u have the motor back in, don't worry about it for now.

33. Get a hammer, and beat the crap out of the right side of the frame on the car, where your alternator is going to go. you need to make a dent roughly 2 inches in diameter and the dent needs to be at least a half inch. its in the same location as your right shock just alot lower.



33. Okay so the motor should be all ready to go now, if you want to save time you can also go ahead and install the new oil filter. Install the new rear motor mount to the rear cross member, go ahead and get it tightened as well. Chain the motor similar to how you chained your stock motor jack it high up in the air, remove the factory exhaust manifold. Attach the Tranny mount to the Tranny, don't tighten it, just finger tighten the bolt. Install the driver side mount but tighten it all the way. Now position it over the car very carefully. Now this is the tricky part, you do not want to damage your ac lines because they are extremely expensive to replace, you need to drop the motor down at a big enough angle to clear the lines, and then you can come up with the motor, this is really hard to explain but you will realize what you have to do once you get the motor in the air, you will definitely need another person, or 2 people if you have them. Once you have the motor positioned inside the bay properly, bolt the driver side mount to the car, Go ahead and tighten the Tranny mount after you get it positioned in the bracket and then bolt it up, now if you did this all correctly your motor should be sitting there beautifully over the rear mount, you might need to push on the motor a little bit once u got it on there perfect, attach the engine to the rear mount.

34. Now go over all your mounts and make sure everything is torqued down properly, I think it is supposed to be torqued to at least 40 lbs.

35. Now hook your engine harness to the main body harness, also make an cut into the rubber boot in the firewall and feed your wires to the ecu.

36. If your going to hook up your ac now is the time to do so, you will need a hasport bracket, place racing or im told u can modify a bseries bracket.

37. Reinstall the exhaust manifold, now you will notice that the manifold will not mate to your cat, no worries you can still drive it around, but you need to pay a visit to your nearest muffler shop and have them make an extension.

38. reinstall the cross member, and then the radiator, followed by the cooling fan, your ac fan is probably not going to fit, at least mine didn't. If your not using ac no problems.

39. Hook up all the radiator hoses and heater hoses.

40. Hook up your fuel lines, I had to use some pieces off of my stock motor you might also, now you should hook up your vacuum hoses but I will save that one for last. go ahead and reinstall your ground straps on the valve cover and for the transmission.