sr5guy
Member
This swap was for a customer of mine - Jeff - from Massachusetts. I run an Acura Legend specialty shop in Bristol, CT and a friend of a Legend owner hooked me up with Jeff to do this CL-S swap and A/T -> M/T swap into his 01 Honda Accord. The donor car, believe it or not, was a totalled 99 Accord Coupe that already had all of the swap work done to it. The motor was recently rebuilt with OEM parts so it didn't require digging into the internals.
I think the donor car may have once belonged to a member on this forum from New Jersey. The donor car had a comptech supercharger, headers, strut bars and Tein EDFCs, all of which (except for the supercharger) were installed on Jeff's car. The supercharger's pulley was damaged in the accident and we're working on repairing it and installing at a later date. All in all this was a fun swap for me to do, and turned the lazy V6 Auto Accord into a respectable little bastard. These cars are so much easier to work on than the Legends!
This swap used the entire engine, wire harness, transmission and ECU from an 03 CL type S. I used the pedals and master cylinder from an Accord 4 cylinder and ran universal brake line (with a Legend hose
) for the clutch. The shifter and cables were from an 03 CL. I rewired the dashboard wire harness for the CL M/T ECU.
A few notes I learned: The IMRC (intake manifold runner control) motor is not directly computer controlled. There is a separate module that interfaces the IMRC to the ECU which was missing from the donor car. Jeff is coming down in about a month or so to hook it up properly. The car runs fine without the IMRC hooked up and doesn't throw a CEL.
DO NOT cut the old dashboard wire harness connector off of the Accord! There are multiple wires that use the same color coding (there are 3 blue wires, 2 pink, 4 green, 2 light green, 2 blue/wht, etc). You have to match these wires by their pin locations which requires that you NOT cut off the connector! I used All Data and printed out both dashboard harness connectors for the CL and Accord and basically started at Pin 1 on the CL connector, cutting the wires off of the Accord connector one-by-one. Note that the CL ECU places the dashboard connector on the OTHER side of the ECU so you will need to add about 6 inches of length to reach it. Make sure you leave some extra wire length on the CL connector.
I will try to post a detailed wiring diagram for the dashboard connector when I have some free time. I can't wait to get one of these things installed in an EK.
Just Getting Started
Bye Bye J30 Auto!
Subframe dropped
Interior all stripped down.
CL-S Motor and trans mounted on subframe.
CL-S Motor and trans installed.
Pedals removed (what a *****)
Drilled the hole for the clutch master cylinder and primed with etching primer.
Pedals Mounted
Dashboard harness rewiring
Dashboard harness rewiring
Dashboard harness rewiring
DON'T JUST CUT THE ACCORD CONNECTOR OFF! There are multiple wires of the same color that must be matched pin for pin.
My soldering work.
Polyolefin Heat Shrink
Dashboard wiring, almost done
Dashboard Harness rewiring.
Nice-N-Neat
03 CL-S ECU Installed
Bracket I had to remove to install 03 CL-S ECU.
Cutting wires to TCS light in cluster (03 CL-S didn't have TCS)
Cut both red/white wires on the A & B connectors (not C!) to disable the TCS light.
Underhood wiring. Cut wires from CL side of the harness - White = Reverse Lockout, White/Blue = IMRC -, White/Red = IMRC+.
Ran wires through existing hole in firewall and added a 3 pin weather tite connector (from a Legend!) so that removal in the future wouldn't require cutting wires.
This image shows the CL side of the harness xwires that were cut/modified. Getting the reverse lights to work was simple this way. Cut the yellow wire off on the left connector and connect it to the white wire.
Interior all back toghether. Yes, I know it's dirty - it's not my car.
Running with no check engine or TCS lights!
-Matt
I think the donor car may have once belonged to a member on this forum from New Jersey. The donor car had a comptech supercharger, headers, strut bars and Tein EDFCs, all of which (except for the supercharger) were installed on Jeff's car. The supercharger's pulley was damaged in the accident and we're working on repairing it and installing at a later date. All in all this was a fun swap for me to do, and turned the lazy V6 Auto Accord into a respectable little bastard. These cars are so much easier to work on than the Legends!
This swap used the entire engine, wire harness, transmission and ECU from an 03 CL type S. I used the pedals and master cylinder from an Accord 4 cylinder and ran universal brake line (with a Legend hose
) for the clutch. The shifter and cables were from an 03 CL. I rewired the dashboard wire harness for the CL M/T ECU.A few notes I learned: The IMRC (intake manifold runner control) motor is not directly computer controlled. There is a separate module that interfaces the IMRC to the ECU which was missing from the donor car. Jeff is coming down in about a month or so to hook it up properly. The car runs fine without the IMRC hooked up and doesn't throw a CEL.
DO NOT cut the old dashboard wire harness connector off of the Accord! There are multiple wires that use the same color coding (there are 3 blue wires, 2 pink, 4 green, 2 light green, 2 blue/wht, etc). You have to match these wires by their pin locations which requires that you NOT cut off the connector! I used All Data and printed out both dashboard harness connectors for the CL and Accord and basically started at Pin 1 on the CL connector, cutting the wires off of the Accord connector one-by-one. Note that the CL ECU places the dashboard connector on the OTHER side of the ECU so you will need to add about 6 inches of length to reach it. Make sure you leave some extra wire length on the CL connector.
I will try to post a detailed wiring diagram for the dashboard connector when I have some free time. I can't wait to get one of these things installed in an EK
.
Just Getting Started
Bye Bye J30 Auto!
Subframe dropped
Interior all stripped down.
CL-S Motor and trans mounted on subframe.
CL-S Motor and trans installed.
Pedals removed (what a *****)
Drilled the hole for the clutch master cylinder and primed with etching primer.
Pedals Mounted
Dashboard harness rewiring
Dashboard harness rewiring
Dashboard harness rewiring
DON'T JUST CUT THE ACCORD CONNECTOR OFF! There are multiple wires of the same color that must be matched pin for pin.
My soldering work.
Polyolefin Heat Shrink
Dashboard wiring, almost done
Dashboard Harness rewiring.
Nice-N-Neat
03 CL-S ECU Installed
Bracket I had to remove to install 03 CL-S ECU.
Cutting wires to TCS light in cluster (03 CL-S didn't have TCS)
Cut both red/white wires on the A & B connectors (not C!) to disable the TCS light.
Underhood wiring. Cut wires from CL side of the harness - White = Reverse Lockout, White/Blue = IMRC -, White/Red = IMRC+.
Ran wires through existing hole in firewall and added a 3 pin weather tite connector (from a Legend!) so that removal in the future wouldn't require cutting wires.
This image shows the CL side of the harness xwires that were cut/modified. Getting the reverse lights to work was simple this way. Cut the yellow wire off on the left connector and connect it to the white wire.
Interior all back toghether. Yes, I know it's dirty - it's not my car
.
Running with no check engine or TCS lights!
-Matt
