water temp gauge not working after engine swap

rockstroh89 · Sep 13, 2019

Car is a 98 5 speed manual. I pulled out the f23a5 non vtec and swapped in a f23a1. picked up the correct ecu, even tho the car will run and drive with the non vtec ecu. everything works exactly as it should besides my temp gauge. after doing a little bit of digging and reading through manuals and diagrams online, I found out that the ecu reads the water temp from different signals varying on the year (98-99, 00-02). now im assuming that I have a 00-02 ecu which would explain why it wont read on my gauge cluster. has anyone made this work before or know what wiring I need to change/ do to make it work without trying to find a gauge cluster from 00-02? any helps appreciated

Eclipse99fwb · Sep 13, 2019

rockstroh89 said:
Car is a 98 5 speed manual. I pulled out the f23a5 non vtec and swapped in a f23a1. picked up the correct ecu, even tho the car will run and drive with the non vtec ecu. everything works exactly as it should besides my temp gauge. after doing a little bit of digging and reading through manuals and diagrams online, I found out that the ecu reads the water temp from different signals varying on the year (98-99, 00-02). now im assuming that I have a 00-02 ecu which would explain why it wont read on my gauge cluster. has anyone made this work before or know what wiring I need to change/ do to make it work without trying to find a gauge cluster from 00-02? any helps appreciated

Yes heres the two links you need
https://www.6thgenaccord.com/forums...temperature-gauge-for-2000-2002-models.54129/

https://www.6thgenaccord.com/forums/threads/hondata-and-the-temp-gauge-2001-accord.54016/page-2

Robertl · Sep 14, 2019

Did ya get the f23a1 wire harness as well?

rockstroh89 · Sep 19, 2019

got it all figured out. car is a dx originally with the f23a5 non vtec so yes I did use the a1 harness due to the differences with the distributor and it having a couple sensors the a5 doesn't. theyre cheap enough and plentiful at my local yards so was a no brainer over doing a bunch of soldering. ended up taking off the 1 plug ect sensor on the side of the head from the motor that was in the car originally and put it in the one that's in the car now, pulled the gauge cluster out and cut the wire on plug C pin #2 and wired it directly to the plug side and capped off the other side. another option would have been to just put in a 2000-2002 gauge cluster lol